Frederick II was born in 1194, heir to the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Sicily. But he was not raised in cold German courts. He grew up in Palermo—a city where Latin Christians, Greek Byzantines, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side. He absorbed languages the way other princes absorbed flattery. Latin, Sicilian, German, Arabic—he moved between worlds. That terrified people. Frederick did not behave like a medieval monarch. He surrounded himself with scholars, physicians, falconers, and m