The empress and the sociopath

On January 27, 1186, Constance de Hauteville wed the eldest surviving son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Heinrich von Hohenstaufen. She was eleven years older than he, and for the first eight years of their marriage, she was believed to be barren. But to the amazement and skepticism of the medieval world, she became pregnant in the spring of 1194, and was delivered of a healthy son in late December of that year, who would later gain greater fame than either of his parents. She was forty by then and Heinrich’s enemies—who were legion and well-deserved—claimed the entire pregnancy was a hoax, a scheme concocted by Heinrich to get a male heir. Constance was outraged by this malicious slander and showed remarkable courage and fortitude by inviting the women of the town of Jesi to watch her give birth, determined that none would be able to deny the legitimacy of her son. I’ve mentioned often that Constance is a character in Ransom and is also the star of my first-ever short story, A Queen in Exile, which appeared this past December in George RR Martin’s anthology, Dangerous Women. I have great admiration for Constance, wed to a man who had neither honor nor mercy. She deserved so much better, and I am grateful to that medieval mosquito who infected Heinrich with malaria and brought about his unexpected and sudden death in 1197—assuming that he did die of malaria, for dysentery has also been suggested, as has poison. While there is no evidence of the latter, if it was true, the question would not have been, Who would have wanted to murder Heinrich? It would have been, Who would not have wanted to murder him?