Denier - Otto III and Adelaide temple, EDILAD

This denier was struck during the regency period following Otto II's sudden death in Rome in December 983, when Otto III was only three years old. Real authority passed to his mother Theophanu and then, after her death in 991, to his grandmother Adelaide — whose name appears on this coin. The pairing of Otto's name with Adelaide's reflects a deliberate legitimizing strategy, associating the child emperor with the most senior Ottonian authority available.

Adelaide outlived Theophanu by nearly a decade and remained politically active into her seventies.