8: Celje // Counts Don’t Marry for Love
The journey to Celje was a blur of flourishing nature and tired industry hidden within, before the majesty of Zidani Most came into view. Not the town, the station, a hulking pink extravagance that claimed importance, backed by hills that did a poor job of keeping out the morning sun before giving way to a stone bridge that is best described as ‘cute’ but is deserving of a far more credible epithet. The train sidled passed a destroyed house, a rare sight in these parts, its roof a mangled memory of wooden beams and sleepless nights. It stood out because of its sparsity, but it too was engulfed by the nature that surrounded it, a mass of green that promised a river down below, a turquoise serpent that soon swept into view. Even here, in the heart of Slovenia’s industrial past, nature reigns supreme.
But did it? Was I not cutting a path through the heart of it by steel and water? Had the railway not conquered nature, allowing humans to go through obstacles it once had to go around? I had nothing to do with the development of the locomotive, of course not, but that single invention did more than most to entrenching the superiority of men and women over nature, at least on a day to day basis. Sure, you’ll get hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes and the like, but they are last-gasp reminders of Mother Nature’s power. The daily grind is dictated by humans. This itself led to a realisation that it is actually still dictated by the weather, but the absurdity of arguing with myself about such a thing was too much for a Saturday morning. Besides, the train had passed Rimske Toplice and Laško and was finally sidling into Celje.
The third-largest city in Slovenia, Celje touches on most of the notes that make the country so pleasing to the eye and the mind. The architecture of the centre glimmers with erstwhile grace, grand old buildings that house cafes on the ground floor and memories above. There are delicate churches, nuggets of curious history and a rumbling of productivity that never threatens to overflow but is consistently maintained nonetheless.
There is also a castle, because of course there is. The largest in Slovenia, no less, or at least it used to be. The fortress stood forebodingly above the modern town, visible in the distance but symbolically inaccessible, like all castles. It gave off an air of impregnability, a ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’ attitude, all towers and walls and defensive might.
Frederick’s Tower is one of the many highlights of Celje Castle, an imposing mast that offers panoramic beauty today but has harboured misery and despair throughout most of its history. Its name is a hint, albeit a hint that requires research and understanding. To the uninitiated, ‘Frederick’s Tower’ is a tower named after a guy called Frederick, clear enough, why the excitement? Well, the excitement comes from a Hollywood tale of family fighting, a marriage that ended in betrayal and execution, and a possible escape through a secret tunnel.
The story starts with Hermann II of Celje. In truth, the story starts with the Counts of Celje, a regional dynasty once strong enough to challenge the Habsburg family in these parts, a line of aristocrats who flourished between the 12th and 15th centuries and became one of Europe’s great powerful families. It didn’t last, the whole ‘15th century’ part of that previous sentence hints at a demise, but the magical combination of marriages and politics took the Counts of Celje from the land to the top table of European politics.
Marriage was what led to the fame of the tower. Herman II was one of the most powerful Counts, considered by many to be the most outstanding, a political titan who dragged the dynasty from a culture of frequent war to a more amenable world of diplomacy. Useful alliances were key.
One such useful alliance was the marriage of his son, Frederick, to Elizabeth of Frankopan, the daughter of an influential king in the Croatian lands. Freddy and Lizzy were betrothed at the age of two, no time for a romance to flourish, let alone one burdened by succession and the complicated matter of a massive, massive dowery.
The two were married around 1405 and it didn’t take long for everything to go wrong. Saying that, they were living separately by 1414, which is almost a decade of putting up with each other, longer than many modern marriages. This was a relationship that existed solely for political reasons, and their unhappiness put a strain on the region. Herman II tried to get involved, to bring the unhappy lovers back together, but to no avail.
Elizabeth and Frederick reconvened in 1422 (probably), in an attempt to heal the wounds of lost love and bring some security to the region. They achieved quite the opposite as Elizabeth was murdered in her chambers, with almost everyone pointing the finger at Frederick. His case wasn’t helped by him almost immediately marrying Veronika of Desenice, a lady of lower nobility that didn’t offer any political gains to the family. Still, love gonna love, love conquers all.
Except it doesn’t. Herman II was still the most powerful man in the land and he wasn’t about the suffer the foolishness of his own son. How dare he marry for love? What’s more, how dare he off the only daughter of a neighbouring ruler to do so? This won’t do. Herman made his move, imprisoning Frederick in the tower that takes his name and having Veronika put on trial for witchcraft. Being charged with such a crime in the 15th century was as good as a death sentence, but Veronika, somehow, was acquitted by the court. Hermann wasn’t to be denied, and she was soon drowned in mysterious circumstances.
And thus Frederick was imprisoned, left to die in the tower. That he didn’t perish in the murky depths is a testament to endurance, strength and hope, but largely a testament to the importance of knowing which guards to get onside. Legend has it that a sympathetic shield-bearer smuggled food into his cell, allowing him to survive this imprisonment and go on to greater things, namely dying in a different castle, some 30km to the west. The penultimate line of the Counts of Celje dynasty was done, and the lineage soon followed suit.
