Denier - Henry VI and Frederick II HRE

Henry VI's claim to Sicily came through his wife Constance, the posthumous daughter of Roger II, making this joint issue the product of a dynastic union that fused Hohenstaufen imperial ambition with the Norman kingdom of the south. Henry extracted the succession under duress from the Sicilian barons, who had backed Tancred of Lecce for years, and his reign over the island lasted barely eighteen months before his death from dysentery at Messina in September 1197.

Frederick, the future emperor, was roughly two years old when this coin circulated. His mother Constance survived Henry by only a year, leaving the child king a ward of Pope Innocent III.