Henry VI of Hohenstaufen, emperor of Germany and king of Sicily

The son of Frederick I Barbarossa, Henry married Constance, the daughter of Roger II de Hauteville, in 1186. On the death of the king of Sicily, William II, in 1189, when the anti-Swabian faction elected Tancred, count of Lecce, as king, Constance and Henry began the conquest of the kingdom of Sicily. After the death of Tancred, the last Norman king, in 1194, Henry was crowned in Palermo on 25 December of that year. In 1197 he repressed a conspiracy by the Sicilian ‘nationalist’ faction, but in September 1197 he died suddenly. Pope Innocent III was entrusted with the guardianship of the infant heir to the throne, Frederick II.