Description
This is the magical story, sealed like a spell, of the eternal child that lives within us. The true story of Corradino of Swabia, the Italo-German prince who at just sixteen years old, in 1266, came to Italy at the head of an army to make it united and free from the pope and foreign powers, half a millennium ahead of Garibaldi. The childhood of the prince in the blue cloak with the Swabian eagle is solitary: he lives segregated from his mother in a castle in Bavaria for fear that he may be assassinated. He is so fragile yet so envied: the kingdom of Sicily and the crown of King of the Romans belong to him. Because Corradino is the grandson of great emperors: Frederick I, the Barbarossa, and Frederick II, the Stupor Mundi who filled Italy with castles, fine arts, and culture. “I feel Italian,” he confides to his eternal friend Frederick of Austria, who will one day descend into battle at his side. But beyond the gigantic portraits of the “neither living nor dead” ancestors that glare at him from the walls of the castle, Corradino has no living model to reflect upon: Corrado, the father born and died in Italy, has never known him. However, one day he is aided by an Arab-Norman warrior: he fought alongside Frederick II, who at the point of death appointed him master of arms for the little heir of the Empire. He teaches him much more than the art of archery and warfare: he initiates him to the secrets of meditation and self-mastery. Because “a true emperor gathers the most invincible army within himself.” Then Fiammetta will arrive, with her unconditional love. In his maturity, Cugia writes a hymn to eternal youth, that rebellious and invincible nature that revives after every defeat and does not retreat even in the face of death. An unmissable novel about the blue prince who could have changed the history of Italy and our lives.
