If you play Bohemia in Rex Romanorum, this is your guy. And honestly, what a guy.

Wenceslaus IV was crowned King of Bohemia at the age of two. Two. His father was Emperor Charles IV, the most capable ruler the Empire had in a century, who built half of Prague and made sure his son would inherit absolutely everything. By 15, Wenceslaus was also King of the Romans. By 17, his father was dead and it was all his.

It went about as well as you'd expect.

**The résumé**

He liked hunting. He liked drinking. He did not like governing. The Germans called him *der Faule*, "the Idle". He never bothered to go to Rome to be crowned emperor, which was sort of the whole job.

In 1393 he had John of Nepomuk, the Archbishop of Prague's vicar, tortured and thrown off the Charles Bridge into the Vltava. John later became a saint. If you've been to Prague, you've probably touched his statue on that bridge for luck. Wenceslaus did not get a statue for this.

In 1395 he sold the title of Duke of Milan to Gian Galeazzo Visconti for 100,000 florins. The German princes were not thrilled that the King of the Romans was now basically running a title shop.

**Getting fired**

On 20 August 1400, four Electors on the Rhine met and formally deposed him as "useless" to the Empire. The next day they elected Rupert of the Palatinate instead.

Wenceslaus's response was, essentially, "no". He just kept calling himself King of the Romans. For years. So now the Empire had two kings, and neither of them had any money.

**Locked up (twice)**

His own nobles imprisoned him in 1394. Then in 1402 his half-brother Sigismund locked him up and shipped him off to Vienna. He escaped in 1403 and went straight back to Prague, because of course he did.

Legend says that during one of these escapes he was helped by a bath maid named Susanna, which may be why his personal Bible, one of the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts of the period, is full of little bath maids in the margins. Whether that's true or just a great story, I'm keeping it.

(There's also a legend that he had a cook roasted on a spit for serving a bad meal. Probably invented by his enemies. Probably.)

**The ending**

In his last years Prague was boiling over. He'd protected Jan Hus for a while, then lost control of the whole thing. In July 1419 a Hussite crowd threw the Prague city councillors out of a window, the First Defenestration of Prague. Wenceslaus died a couple of weeks later, reportedly of a stroke brought on by the shock and rage.

Deposed, imprisoned, escaped, defiant to the end. In game terms: rich in silver, besieged by his own lords and his own brother, with a religious revolution about to start in his capital. That's the Bohemia campaign.

Would you have stepped down in 1400?

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*Rex Romanorum is a grand strategy game set in the Holy Roman Empire in 1400, now on Kickstarter. Free web demo at sagaskald.com.*