Denier Bracteate - Conradin of Hohenstaufen

Conradin was the last of the Hohenstaufen dynasty — duke in name from infancy, executed in Naples in 1268 at sixteen years old after his defeat at the Battle of Tagliacozzo. Charles of Anjou had him publicly beheaded in the market square, a spectacle that shocked even contemporary observers accustomed to dynastic brutality. Coins struck under his authority in Swabia therefore span the entirety of a tragically short life defined almost entirely by regency governance, with real ducal power exercised by others on his behalf.

The bracteate form was already archaic by the mid-thirteenth century in much of Europe, persisting in Swabian minting as a regional conservatism rather than any practical preference.