Frederick’s reign, and indeed the whole of the fifteenth century, is intensely vulnerable to two problems for historians: the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress Effect’ and the ‘Christmas Pantomime Syndrome’. The first of these views the individual monarch as a figure who needs in his lifetime to reach a specific goal – invariably the creation of a coherent state as much as possible like the modern empire or country as it would emerge in the nineteenth century. Rulers are therefore judged on the degree to which they remain on this path and are not seduced, waylaid or discouraged by other temptations, like
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