THE ORIGINS OF THE SICILIAN KINGDOMsouth, Pope Celestine was well aware of the dangers he would
face if the western emperor added not merely northern
Italy but also Sicily and the south to his domain.
This, of course, was precisely what occurred when in^1189
King William the Good died young and childless; by normal
law of succession the kingdom devolved upon Roger II's
daughter Constance as sole legitimate survivor of the royal
house. The difficulty was not Constance, but her husband
Henry ofHohenstaufen, heir to Frederick Barbarossa's lands
in Germany, Burgundy and Italy. The barons of the kingdom
set Henry's claims aside in favour of an illegitimate grand-
son of Roger II, Tancred Count of Leece. Henry, backed by
German, Genoese and Pisan forces, invaded southern Italy,
and in 1194, on his second attempt, all fell before him. The
defences of the kingdom were less strong than its tradition
of government.^22
For Henry and Constance did not transform their king-
dom into a different type of state. They showed themselves
highly responsive to the existing traditions within govern-
ment. They did not wish to integrate the kingdom into the
empire, but rather to hold it apart from the empire as a
personal dominion, a special source of financial and mil-
itary strength. Henry VI planned expeditions certainly to
Jerusalem and perhaps to Constantinople, and these expedi-
tions were to be based primarily on the manpower resources
and shipping of southern Italy. Henry saw himself as the
crusading emperor who would redeem Jerusalem, lost by the
Christians as recently as 1187, and establish the name of his
revived Roman Empire from one end to another of Europe
and the Mediterranean world. What impeded Henry's gran-
diose plans of Mediterranean empire was his sudden death
( 1197); Constance shortly before then gave birth to a son,
Frederick (1194-1250), whose reign left a legacy of strife to
the whole of Italy.
FREDERICK II
Frederick II has suffered at the hands of historians who
have tried to separate him from his Norman predecessors,- P. Csendes, Heinrich VI. (Darmstadt, 1993); H. Toeche, Hf!inrich VI.
(Leipzig, 1867).