Otto II
Otto II ruled the empire for ten years and lost an army in Calabria. Born in 955, the son of Otto the Great and Adelaide of Italy, he was crowned co-emperor at thirteen and married in 972 to Theophanu, a Byzantine princess — a match his father had pursued for years to secure recognition of the western imperial title, and which Constantinople conceded with a niece rather than the born-in-the-purple daughter that had been asked for. He succeeded alone in 973 at eighteen and spent his first years putting down family revolts, chiefly by his cousin Henry the Quarrelsome of Bavaria, whom he deposed and imprisoned. He fought Lothair of France, who had seized Aachen and turned the imperial eagle on its roof to face east; Otto marched to Paris, burned the suburbs and had his army sing hallelujah on Montmartre. He then turned to southern Italy, intending to take Byzantine Apulia and Calabria and to expel the Sicilian Muslims, and styled himself emperor of the Romans rather than emperor Augustus, which was a claim against Constantinople. At Capo Colonna in July 982 he met an army of the Kalbid emir of Sicily. The German heavy cavalry broke the centre and killed the emir, and were then enveloped by cavalry that had been held back. Otto escaped by swimming to a passing Greek ship and slipping away. A Slav revolt across the Elbe followed the news and undid fifty years of expansion. He died in Rome in 983 at twenty-eight. He is the only Holy Roman Emperor buried in St Peter's. His three-year-old son inherited a crisis.
- Lived: 955 CE – 983 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader
