Italy

Once the seat of largest Empire the world has yet seen, Italy has fallen far since the Dark Ages. Where there was once unity, now there lies an impenetrable patchwork of feuding and constantly shifting city-states, principalities and republics, forever vying for political and economic supremacy.

The nearest thing to a central authority figure is the Pope in Rome. The successor of St Peter and Vicar of Christ, he presides over the vast organisation that is the Catholic Church, the supreme spiritual leader - and politically the final arbiter - for most of Europe. Even Kings bow to and acknowledge the authority of the Holy Father, for it is from God that they derive their regal authority, and the Pope is God's earthly representative.

But Papal power is not absolute. Across the Alps in Germany, the Holy Roman Emperor claims temporal authority over the whole of the Holy Roman Empire - including Italy - and the current Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, is a man with an iron will to match even the most stubborn of Pontiffs. When the Pope and the states of Italy defy him, Barbarossa thinks nothing of marching vast armies of German knights down the Italian peninsula, laying waste to the proud city-states as he goes.

In the South, things are a little more stable. Over the past century and a half Norman adventurers, particularly from the de Hauteville family, have conquered Sicily and the lower half of the peninsula with the same efficiency and completeness that William the Conqueror applied to England... often at the expense of the Byzantines and the Pope.