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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 16: The Heretic King (2)

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Prague, the council chamber of the Old Town Hall.

Two major groups stood there, barely restraining their hostility toward one another.

The professors of Prague University sat on one side of the heavy oak table.

Theologians and thinkers more familiar with quills than swords. Their deeply lined faces held both pride in having led this revolution through logic and Scripture, and anguish over the war spiraling into an uncontrollable tragedy.

Across from them stood Prague's great nobles and representatives of its wealthy citizens, their faces tense.

They had joined the cause not only for theological reasons, but also for practical aims: to seize the Church's vast wealth and curb royal authority.

Yet they too were sick to death of this endless war, which blocked trade routes and emptied their coffers.

These two factions were generally classified as the Utraquists among the Hussites.

Apart from both groups, someone stood near the door, quiet yet radiating a threatening presence.

He had one eye, a lean frame, and a face blackened by the sun. A chalice emblem carved from wood had been crudely sewn onto his shabby clothes.

He did not say a word, yet his presence alone made everyone in the room feel as though they could barely breathe.

To him, Prague's professors were compromisers, and the nobles selfish opportunists. He was the Hussite movement's most radical and ruthless flail of faith.

He was Jan Žižka of the Taborites.

"Mm..."

"Ahem!"

Under that chilling gaze, suffocating silence filled the chamber. Only awkward coughs broke the stillness.

Every eye in the room was fixed on a single sheet of parchment lying atop the great table.

It was neither a royal decree nor a papal letter, only a letter sent by a provincial lord.

Yet that very letter had gathered every leader of the divided Hussites in one place.

At last, Jan Rokycana, the spiritual pillar of the Utraquists, a professor at Prague University and a renowned theologian, broke the silence.

For now, he was no more than a theologian, but one day he would become the Archbishop of Prague appointed by the Hussites.

Rokycana looked around the room and spoke cautiously.

"We have gathered here... to discuss the letter sent by the Lord of Sternberg."

"What is there to discuss?"

Cenek of Vartemberk, leader of the pragmatic noble faction, stepped forward as if he had been waiting for this.

"'I sincerely hope that Sternberg's eight-pointed star and Bohemia's lion banner may fly beside your chalice banner.' He took the long way around, but isn't he really asking us to make him king?"

The chamber immediately erupted into murmurs. Rokycana calmed the room and spoke evenly.

"...To be honest, it is a difficult offer to refuse. The bloodline of Charles IV carries tremendous weight."

"Master Rokycana is right!"

Excitement filled Cenek's voice, as though he had finally found a way forward.

"Have you forgotten? We are fighting all of Europe! The Pope and the Emperor call us heretics and send crusaders against us because we are rebels without a king."

Cenek clenched both fists as he spoke passionately.

"But if Charles IV's rightful descendant stands with us, everything changes. This will no longer be a rebellion, but a legitimate civil war to reclaim the throne from a usurper! Even the Pope will not dare call a direct descendant of a Holy Roman Emperor a heretic so easily!"

At that moment, Jan Želivský, the hardline theologian representing the Taborites, sprang to his feet.

"Nonsense!"

He had led the recent Prague Defenestration, unintentionally shocking the incompetent King Wenceslaus IV to death.

Fanatical flames burned in Želivský's eyes.

"Have you forgotten that while he may be Charles IV's descendant, he is also the nephew of Sigismund, the liar who burned our teacher Jan Hus at the stake? His father belonged to the Catholic Imperial faction, and he himself is our enemy who burned Comrade Mikuláš of Hus to death!"

Bang!

Želivský slammed his hand onto the table.

"What proof do we have that this is not Sigismund's trap?"

His shout threw the chamber into an uproar again. Cenek gave a contemptuous snort.

"If you look at it that way, then no one with Luxembourg blood can become king."

"What did you say?!"

"Would you rather continue fighting without a king, only to be picked apart one by one by foreign invaders? Will your precious faith stop the crusaders' blades?"

As sparks were about to fly between them, Rokycana stepped in to mediate.

"Calm yourselves. Let us put emotion aside and consider only the legitimacy of it. Being Charles IV's grandson through his daughter is clearly a powerful claim. It could unite the hearts of Bohemia's people, who long for the previous Emperor's golden age. It might even become a banner capable of gathering moderate Catholics who despise Sigismund."

Then Prokop the Great, the Taborite military priest who had been watching from a corner with his arms crossed, spoke contemptuously.

"The great Emperor's two sons turned out the way they did. Do you think his grandson will be any different? Besides, he is a grandson through a daughter, only half the bloodline."

"What nonsense is that?! Is a grandson through a daughter not a grandson?"

Cenek shouted angrily.

"And is this the time to argue over grandsons through sons and daughters? The crusaders are sharpening their blades beyond the border!"

Rokycana once again reminded them of reality in a grave voice.

"Everyone. We must face the facts. Honestly, do we have any other choice left?"

Rokycana's words weighed even more heavily upon the chamber.

"Jobst of Moravia and Margrave Prokop, nephews of His Majesty Charles IV, are already dead. Apart from Sigismund and King Wenceslaus, they were Bohemia's most legitimate heirs."

In truth, Sigismund's hunger for the throne was nothing new.

About twenty years ago, he had used his older brother Wenceslaus IV's incompetence as an excuse to abduct and imprison him in Vienna, Austria, intending to make himself King of Bohemia.

At the time, four men had contested Bohemia's throne: Charles IV's two sons, Wenceslaus and Sigismund, and his two nephews, Jobst and Prokop.

Of them, Jobst of Moravia had even briefly risen above Sigismund to become Holy Roman Emperor.

Fifteen weeks after ascending the throne, he had suddenly "died" of an unknown illness, making his victory meaningless.

Now, nearly twenty years later, Sigismund was the only one of those four still alive.

"His Majesty Charles IV's other descendants have either rejected our crown or are princesses who have already become queens in foreign lands. I do not wish to admit it, but in Bohemia today, the only ones with a legitimate claim to be king are Sigismund and... this Ulrich."

Heavy silence fell over the chamber again. Within it, Prokop the Great spoke.

"...There is one more, is there not? Władysław II Jagiełło. Does he not also hate Sigismund?"

Cenek raised an eyebrow.

"You mean the King of Poland? He is a foreigner with no connection to Bohemia."

"He may not be of Charles IV's blood, but he is one of Europe's most powerful rulers. He is also an enemy of Sigismund, our greatest foe. Sigismund openly supports Poland's sworn enemy, the Teutonic Order. I have heard that King Jagiełło showed considerable interest in our offer."

It was already an open secret that Poland was secretly supporting the Hussites in order to weaken Sigismund.

Rokycana shook his head.

"But he is still a Catholic ruler. No matter how much he hates Sigismund, he will not wish to become king of heretics and be excommunicated by the Holy See. So, rather than come himself, he put forward his cousin Vytautas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, as his representative."

Prokop frowned.

"A royal representative? Then perhaps that man..."

"Grand Duke Vytautas was equally reluctant to be branded a heretic. So he said he would send his nephew, Duke Korybut, in his place."

Cenek let out a hollow laugh.

"...So if we reject this Ulrich, we are to serve the representative of a representative of a king as our king?"

A cold silence settled over the chamber once more.

Heretic.

In the end, that damned label was the problem.

To become King of Bohemia now meant turning not only the Holy Roman Empire, but the entire Catholic world, into an enemy.

Finding a ruler willing to take such a risk was like plucking a star from the sky.

Cenek sighed deeply.

"I simply cannot believe it... One thing is certain. This Ulrich is either a madman or a genius. He must know perfectly well that we have no other candidate. That is why he set this scheme in motion."

With an expression of complete disbelief, he asked:

"How could someone of His Majesty Charles IV's blood have remained hidden and unknown until now? Why did we never know such a man existed?"

"I will explain that."

The speaker was Jan of Příbram, the rector of Prague University and the man most knowledgeable about old records and family trees.

He opened an ancient, dust-covered book and began to explain calmly.

Ulrich's mother, Princess Eliška, had been Charles IV's youngest daughter, born in his final years.

But she had been born prematurely, and to make matters worse, her mother, the Empress, had died in childbirth. The court had regarded Eliška as an ill-omened child.

She had been so frail at birth that everyone believed she would soon die, including her father, Charles IV.

Naturally, the princess had faded from everyone's memory. Then a miracle occurred.

Thanks to the devoted care of an elderly maid, the princess survived into adulthood, though she had to spend most of her days in bed.

When the forgotten youngest princess reached marriageable age, the Emperor fell into deep thought. She was too frail to marry into a foreign royal house, and there was little chance that she could bear children.

So the Emperor decided to entrust the sickly princess to his most trusted servant, Petr of Sternberg.

He promised that if the princess died young without bearing a child, Petr would be allowed to remarry in the Emperor's name.

As a result, though it was an imperial marriage, the wedding was held so modestly that few knew of it.

But something happened that even the Emperor had not expected. What began as a duty between sovereign and vassal became genuine love, as Petr came to love his wife with all his heart.

Their sorrowful love brought a baby boy into the world like a miracle. Yet their happiness did not last long.

Princess Eliška died a few years after giving birth to her son... and Petr never took another wife for the rest of his life.

"A sickly princess who might die at any moment... I see. From the beginning, she was politically worthless, someone who could not be married into another royal house."

"That is correct. It was not news likely to reach the ears of provincial lords or Prague scholars such as ourselves, let alone the peasants."

At that moment, the radical theologian Jan Želivský, who had kept silent until then, gave a mocking laugh.

"What a tearful tale. So now the protagonist of that tragedy has appeared, demanding to become king? Is that not a little too timely to be a coincidence?"

Cenek immediately argued back.

"What are you saying? The tragic descendant of a forgotten princess! What a perfect story! The people will be captivated by it!"

"A perfect trap, more likely!"

Želivský glared at him with bloodshot eyes.

"Have you never considered that this is all Sigismund's scheme? He failed to have the nephew who threatened his throne die at our hands, so now he has thrown him to us as bait to sow discord! The moment we accept that green lord, our revolution will rot from within!"

After a long argument, Rokycana, exhausted beyond measure, raised his voice.

"Enough! All of you, stop!"

His shout briefly quieted the commotion. Rokycana brushed back his disheveled hair and spoke.

"Even as we debate here, Sigismund is gathering his army. We must decide now. Will we accept Sternberg's offer, or reject it?"

At Rokycana's words, the chamber sank into heavy silence again. No one could bring themselves to speak first.

Then it happened.

Jan Žižka, the shadow who had stood against the wall without moving until now, spoke for the first time.

His voice was rough, as though worn raw by battle, yet it carried enough weight to silence every sound in the chamber at once.

"Fighting isn't done with words."

Everyone turned toward him. The one-eyed old general stared intently at the letter on the table and continued.

"I don't care whether that brat is Charles IV's grandson or the Devil's child. It doesn't matter if he is Sigismund's spy or a savior. Only one thing matters. Can the bastard fight?"

Žižka's gaze slowly swept across the chamber.

"Mikuláš may have been a fool, but he wasn't an easy opponent. That boy defeated him twice, with only a few dozen soldiers and peasants. You don't do that through luck."

"I don't know theology, and I don't know politics. War is all I know. And in war, what matters most isn't legitimacy or bloodline. It is a blade that can win."

"I must see for myself whether the man who sent this letter is truly a useful blade, or simply an ornament that breaks easily."

Rector Jan of Příbram sighed deeply and responded to Žižka.

"...General Žižka is right. In the end, we must verify his worth for ourselves. We cannot recklessly hand Bohemia's crown to an untested man. The gamble is far too great."

He did not continue the argument. Instead, he began to offer a practical solution everyone could accept.

"Let us offer him the position of Regent of Bohemia. He will govern in the king's stead and be given authority to stand against Sigismund as Commander-in-Chief of our Hussite armies."

It was an elegant move. They would not give him the throne, but would grant him authority and responsibility nearly equal to that of a king.

"If he truly joins our cause and proves his ability as Commander-in-Chief... it will not be too late to make him our king then. But if he has other intentions, or proves incompetent... then we need only remove him from office."

Cenek of Vartemberk was the first to nod with a satisfied smile.

"A good idea, Rector. A very reasonable and practical method. It is the perfect chance to test both his sincerity and his ability."

Jan Želivský still looked deeply dissatisfied, but with Jan Žižka standing firm, he had no grounds to object further. He simply shut his mouth with a sour expression.

And so, the Hussite leadership reached a single conclusion. Rokycana brought the meeting to a close.

"Then let us send a letter. Tell the young Lord of Sternberg to come to Prague and prove his worth in person."

Footnotes:

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