Ottokar II of Bohemia

Ottokar II of Bohemia ruled from Silesia to the Adriatic, was passed over for the imperial crown, and was killed at Marchfeld by the man who got it. He was called the Iron and Golden King, for his armoured knights and for the silver of Kutna Hora and Jihlava that paid for them. He rebelled against his own father as a young man, and then acquired Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola in the vacuum left by the extinction of the Babenberg line, partly by a marriage to a woman thirty years older than himself. He crusaded twice in Prussia; the Teutonic Knights named Konigsberg for him. He founded towns, invited German settlers, codified law, and rebuilt Prague as a capital. In 1273 the imperial electors, faced with the most powerful prince in Germany, deliberately chose the least powerful instead and elected Rudolf of Habsburg, a modest Swabian count. Ottokar refused to recognise the election, was outlawed, and lost the Alpine duchies in 1276 without a fight when his nobles would not follow him. He tried again two years later and met Rudolf on the Marchfeld north-east of Vienna in August 1278, where a concealed reserve of Hungarian cavalry took him in the flank and he was killed after the battle by Austrians with a private grievance. Rudolf gave Austria to his own sons. The Habsburgs held it for the next 640 years. His son Wenceslaus II recovered Bohemia and later took the Polish and Hungarian crowns as well, and the Premyslid line died out in 1306 when his own son was murdered at seventeen. Choosing the weakest candidate in 1273 turned out to be the most consequential decision the electors ever made.

• Lived: 1233 CE – 1278 CE
• Nationality: Bohemian
• Roles: monarch, military_leader