Antichrist

Even before his birth in 1194, legends surrounded the only child of the emperor Henry VI and the Empress-Queen Constance of the royal Norman house of Sicily. Joachim de Flora pronounced him Antichrist; other prophets saw in him the long-expected child who would usher in the Golden Age. Such high expectations are rarely halfway met. In the case of Frederick II the prophecies were only the start. His bitter fight with the Pope, his decision to go on Crusade, and his taking of Jerusalem with the connivance of the sultan al-Kamil are the bare bones of a story which sweeps through the Mediterranean world from Sicily to Cyprus to Jaffa and climaxes with the crowning of Frederick in Saint Sepulcher in Jerusalem. As always with this superb writer, the modern parallels are subtly drawn.