Chapter 1: A shitty timing to be reborn

28 September 1197, Messina

I awake vomiting on myself while being tortured by abdominal pain. Feeling dehydrated with a raising heart that tries to jump out of my body, I crawl out of a bed.

''My Emperor are you all right?'' Asks me a young beautiful maiden.

''How can I be all right. I am poisoned...'' I should at the maid reflexively without knowing how I know that.

-Ok. If I was poisoned I have to get the substance out of my body.- I think feeling my heartbeat stop irregularly from time to time.

''Should I get a healer?'' The maid asks me innocently.

Shaking my head I tell her. ''Get me some water.''

Just as she is leaving the room I again puck my guts out. Seeing my view get tunnel-like, I suddenly see words appear in the center of my field of vision.

[Enêpsigos System engaged]

[Reincarnation in progress]

[Please chose bonus buff for reincarnated beings]

[Streng/ Magic/ Knowledge]

Being a seeker of knowledge I instinctively chose it.

[Knowledge selected:

The only way to keep the memories of your past life and receive the memories of the host body. No additional buffs can ever be granted and the systems core functions shut down after finishing reincarnation.]

Not knowing what is happening to me, my body suddenly feels like being cooled from the inside and most of my pain vanishes before new lines of text appear that suddenly overwrite my mind.

[Initialising Memory transfer... from host body (Heinrich VI. Hohenstaufen) to the soul (Heinrich Fischer).]

Like movie memories of the Heinrich VI. and Heinrich Fischer clash for dominance. The laters telling me the bland historical knowledge about Henry VI. while the former is full of emotions and personal memories.

Trying to sort through all of the contradicting knowledge I sit down at a table, take a quilt and note down the correlating information.

-Henry was born in autumn 1165 at the Valkhof Pfalz Nijmegen to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Beatrix of Burgundy. At the age of four, his father had him elected King of the Romans during the Hoftag in Bamberg at Pentecost 1169, and Henry was crowned on 15 August at Aachen Cathedral.

He accompanied his father on his Italian campaign of 1174-76 against the Lombard League, whereby he was educated by Godfrey of Viterbo and associated with minnesingers like Friedrich von Hausen, Bligger von Steinach, and Bernger von Horheim. Henry is fluent in Latin and, knowledgeable in eloquence, and learned in canon and Roman law. He is a patron of poets and poetry, and he composed the song, Kaiser Heinrich.

Having returned to Germany in 1178, Henry supported his father against insurgent Duke Henry the Lion. He and his younger brother Frederick received the knightly accolade at Mainz in 1184.

At that time Henry's father had already entered into negotiations with King William II of Sicily to betroth him with William's aunt Constance. As William's marriage had remained childless, she was his sole legitimate heir, and, after the latter's death in November 1189, Henry had the opportunity of adding the Sicilian crown to the imperial one. He and Constance were married on 27 January 1186 in Milan.

With his father, Friedrich on the third crusade Henry unofficial took over the reins of the Empire until his father's death on said crusade in 1190. Having initially been part of the crusade Henry befriended Richard of England and antagonized Philip of France. Being sent back early Henry tried to secure his rule in the Low Countries which was difficult in and of itself and was further complicated with the return of the exiled Welf duke Henry the Lion from England that began to subdue large estates in his ancestral Duchy of Saxony.

Henry entered into further negotiations with the Lombard League cities and with Pope Celestine III on his Imperial coronation and ceded Tusculum to the Pope. At Easter Monday on 15 April 1191, in Rome, Henry and his consort Constance were crowned Emperor and Empress by Celestine.

The crown of Sicily, however, was harder to gain, as the Sicilian nobility had chosen Count Tancred of Lecce as their king. Henry began his work campaigning in Apulia and besieging Naples, but he encountered resistance when Tancred's lineman Margaritus of Brindisi came to the city's defense, harassed Henry's Pisan navy, and nearly destroyed the later arriving Genoese contingent. Moreover, the Imperial army had been heavily hit by an epidemic, and Henry ultimately had to abandon the siege. Upon his retreat, those cities had surrendered to him resubmitted to Tancred, and Constance, who was left in the palace of Salerno as a sign that he would soon return, was betrayed and handed over to Tancred.

Meanwhile, despite his wife, had been captured by Sicilians, Henry always refused Celestine III making peace with Tancred. While Tancred would not permit Constance to be ransomed, Henry complained her capture to Celestine. In June 1192 Constance was released on the intervention of Pope Celestine III, who in return recognized Tancred as King of Sicily. Constance was to be sent to Rome for Celestine III to put pressure on Henry, but German soldiers managed to set up an ambush on the border of Papal States, releasing Constance.

Ever since getting his wife back their relationship was never the same.

At this stage, Henry had a stroke of good fortune when the Babenberg duke Leopold V of Austria gave him his prominent prisoner, his old friend, and backstabber Richard the Lionheart, King of England, whom Henry had wanted to take revenge for his alliance with Tancred of Lecce.-

Jumping ahead in time, I try to reconstruct what led to this body being poisoned. -Tancred of Lecce died in 1194, the same year he entered the Sicilian Palermo and was crowned king. On the next day his wife Constance, who had stayed back in Lissabon, gave birth to his only son and heir Frederick. Appointing Constance Sicilians queen regnant the following year he had hoped that their relationship was finally kitted.

Being blinded at this point in time by being the most powerful monarch in the Mediterranean and Europe, he lost all reason and made three big mistakes that led to his death. First, he tried to make imperial crown hereditary, second, he wanted to try his luck in a crusade and third, he neglected Constance who in the end poisoned him.-

''I am fucked!'' I say to myself, remembering the events after Henry VI. death.

- His minor son Frederick II was to inherit both the Kingdom of Sicily and the Imperial crown. However, a number of princes around Archbishop Adolf of Cologne elected the Welf Otto of Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion, archenemy, and anti-king. To defend the claims of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, his brother Philip of Swabia had himself elected King of the Romans in March 1198. The German throne quarrel lasted nearly twenty years until Frederick was again elected king in 1212 and Otto, defeated by the French in the 1214 Battle of Bouvines and abandoned by his former allies, finally died in 1218.-

Having a clear head and organized the new memories, I throw the papers into the nearby fireplace to not give myself away.

-Despite being king, I am as good as dead.- I think, identifying my self more and more as the Emperor. Checking out my new body for the first time I notice the stark contrast between Emperor and me. First he is much shorter than my former 1,95m but second, he is much more fit than my former self at a hight of 1,85 and around 83kg of pure trained muscles.

''This body is sick, but still a shitty timing for reincarnation,'' I say out loud when the door is suddenly pushed open.

Contrast to the by me expected maid, that according to the emperor's memories is called Anna a group of knights storm in, swords drawn.

''What do you want?'' I ask but no one answers me until Empress Constance arrives with Frederick in her arms.

''You have lost a husband. Friedrich says goodbye to your father...''The stone cold empress tells the child in her arms.

''Goodby daddy!'' Says the innocent Frederich to me.

-Fuck, medieval artists are really bad artists. Constance is model quality. Fuck that green eyes, that brown hair and that face how can Henry VI. have fucked anybody else.- I think not really having a feeling of really being confronted by this situation.

''Your tyranny ends today. Execute him...'' Says Constance coldly before adding. ''... That's for not choosing between my aunt and me.''