Denier - Stephen III

Stephen III came to power as a teenager in 1162, immediately contested by two Hungarian noble factions who successively installed his uncles — László II and then István IV — as rival kings, both backed by Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos. The political instability of the first years of his reign makes attributing early issues to specific phases of his rule nearly impossible; the denier series runs continuously across a decade of intermittent civil conflict and Byzantine interference that ended only with István IV's death in 1165.