🇩🇰 Originally published in Danish — automatically translated
The story of Saint Wenceslaus, patron saint of the city of Prague and of the Czech lands as a whole, is one of the stories I'm beginning to get a real hold of. I haven't read or watched Game of Thrones, but I understand the fascination with medieval power games — and as with every other story, it's the story itself that has quality. Not its historical accuracy.
Saint Wenceslaus's father was a king. His paternal grandparents had converted to Christianity and been baptised by the two most important missionaries to arrive in Bohemia at the end of the first millennium — to these Czech lands, as they're called in English, the region where Czech language and culture have their roots. Was there a state called the Czech Republic for Wenceslaus's father to be king of? Probably not. Was he ever actually a king? Well, not really. And yet he is one of those figures whose story we need to know in order to know the story of this place — and to know ourselves.
He also has a much easier name in Czech, as it happens. The long Latin version, which is nearly impossible to guess how to pronounce, must be a Christianised rendering of the Czech Václav — long a, soft c. No tongue-twisters there.
So let's call him Václav the Good. Like all legendary figures from the early Middle Ages, he has an epithet for identification, and this Václav is, well, good.
But good in contrast to whom?
The legend holds that he was killed by his brother, who quite fittingly goes down in history as The Evil One. That sorts things out neatly. But perhaps there was a different kind of darkness at work in Václav's story?
His father was a king, and his grandfather before him. His paternal grandparents were part of the power elite of Europe and had converted to the great religion spreading through the Roman Empire. Charlemagne had converted and been crowned emperor in 800 in Aachen — arguably the most beautiful cathedral in the world, by the way, overlooked and completely extraordinary — and these grandparents came just one generation later.
When Václav's father died, his grandmother became regent. She had been positioning him for the role his entire life, but he was too young — only thirteen. He was still studying. Through his grandmother Ludmilla's initiative, he had received the finest possible education, and he wasn't done yet. His mother, Drahomíra, was meanwhile growing tired of all the snobbery. A moment ago she had been queen — a title she had converted to obtain — and now her mother-in-law had not only seized the attention and the power; she also had complete control over her son's formation.
Tired of it all, Drahomíra hired an assassin and had Ludmilla killed — strangled with her own veil. In her holiness, her elevation, her distance? The symbol is powerful: to be strangled by the veil. And the conflict is fundamental — the bottomless, all-consuming, unconditional love of a mother and grandmother, set against the struggle for royal power. All the themes are present in the story of Václav's path to power.
Drahomíra took power after her mother-in-law, became queen, and drove the Christian nobility out — so that by the time Václav was eighteen, his mother was sent into exile when the remaining Christian princes united against her.
Did Václav ever actually become king? It's a little hard to pin down, and perhaps not the most important thing in the story anyway. It continues with pressure from the Franks, the Magyars, and the Saxons; alliances and attacks, intrigue and war, back and forth. What matters, I think, is that Václav gathered what had been scattered — creating a government that united Czech rulers, strengthening the Christian and thereby also the intellectual community, introducing Latin and German, both as languages and as ecclesiastical tradition.
In one of the later conflicts, Václav was killed at a feast. By his brother. Boleslav the Cruel conspired with a group of resentful princes who ambushed Václav — who, according to legend, received the fatal lance from his own brother's hand. Perhaps the stories were shaped to honour the archetypes. It is the ultimate betrayal.
And what do we do with any of this? Kings, mothers, veils, castles, lances, murders, and queens from the early Middle Ages are the stuff of legends, stories, illustrations, novels, and yes — TV series I can't be bothered to watch. I look out the window at a morning runner with a swinging ponytail and think about how, at the end of September, one of the church's men lifts Václav's skull from a box or a reliquary — wrapped in a veil, it is carried on a cushion through the streets of Prague for all to see. Held out. Held holy.
It doesn't matter whose skull it actually is. It doesn't matter whether the stories are historically correct. What matters is that these stories are part of the city's foundation. An early morning walk across Charles Bridge, from the medieval centre, will bring you to almost the last statue on the left — Václav with his hat, standing with hands folded, looking toward the sky. The symbol of a humble and holy man. A patron saint holding his hand over the city where modern Czechs go on their morning runs.
You could make any number of interpretations.
The legend continues with tales of religious and symbolic significance: angels appearing on either side of Václav on horseback on the battlefield, calling on the enemy to stand down. And the story of how he rose from his bed every single night to walk the city's churches and give alms to widows, orphans, the sick, and the poor — later ratified by the pope as historical truth.
I love Catholic truths.
They are perfectly in line with my favourite quote about stories, from The Name of the Wind: All stories are true, but this one really happened, if that is what you mean.
The story of Václav as the king who is just and learned, has God on his side, is flanked by angels on the battlefield, and walks barefoot through the night for those who are suffering — that is the story of the king we all need.
That's why Václav sits on horseback in front of the National Museum and is understood as the most important medieval king in Bohemia, the central figure in the story of the kingdom here — even though he was neither the first nor a proper king at all. These stories, standing at the centre of our cultures, tell us who we want to be. They point toward how we might understand what life is, and where goodness comes from. They speak of motives, psychologies, dreams, ideals.
The story of the patron-saint king who emerged from the early Middle Ages, received the finest education, had to live inside the conflict between grandmother and mother, and eventually took power and united his land through a shared religious community — that is the story of who we want to be.
The word "Christianity" can throw most people off these days. There are thoughts about manipulation, abuse of power, the distortion of freedom, gender roles, and structures of control — and if you look at evangelical America, you genuinely feel sick. For me, the story of Václav as the Christian king who united a people and had angels at his back and his moral compass pointing true is not part of that story. It is a story about being spiritual, well-educated, and having the courage to stand by what you actually believe. About giving what you can and doing what you can for the common good. Maybe it's a projection — but I think it's a broadly human projection, if so. We reach for these stories because they matter, because they define and calibrate us; they sharpen our focus and help us be who we want to be.
We can see ourselves in them, use them as solid ground, find our way through their symbols, understand ourselves against their backdrop. There are many heroes in Czech culture, many names to put on that inner wall. Saint Václav was a good place to start. So as the trees come into leaf in Prague, we move on — to Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, to Tycho Brahe and Kepler, to Kafka and Kundera, forward to Havel and Černý, and who knows what else will appear in the constellation Prague has become.
If Wenceslaus — Václav — is the Good King, he is something like a tarot card, the ultimate king symbol; the king we all want, perhaps the person we all want to be. The one who uses what they have to move toward the good, helps where they can, and stands against every form of evil wherever it appears. That is probably the only truth worth taking from the story of the medieval king who became the patron saint of both the city of Prague and of the Czech lands as a whole. That's what the story is about, really.
Whether it is true or not. The Good King is a true and healthy ideal — a star worth following on any sky.
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