The fact that his noble vassals were poached, and they were still duke-level vassals, which really made William lose face, and he secretly made up his mind to take revenge on Agnes of the Poitu family, the queen mother of the Holy Roman Empire.

William, who had been following the Holy Roman Empire and spies in the Nassau court, naturally knew why Empress Agnes chose to poach Welf instead of the two Germanic nobles of the Hohenzollern family under his command.

Queen Agnes, the mother of the young Emperor Henry IV and appointed regent and guardian of Henry IV on his deathbed, confronted the unruly princes of the Empire.

In order to appease these princes, instead of them uniting against their son Henry IV and electing a new HRE emperor, Empress Agnes of Poitu had to implement a policy of leniency towards the dukes and princes.

But this is tantamount to drinking to quench thirst, and the princes, knowing the weakness of the Empress Dowager Agnes, are even more unscrupulous and arrogant.

In order to oppose these princes, Agnes appointed the patriarch of Goslar Cathedral, Anno. Feng. Stitzlingen was the Archbishop of Cologne, and on the other hand, she was actively courting the Emperor's party that supported her and Henry IV.

Otto III, Duke of Swabia, Ludwig, Count of Thuringia, Bernhard II, Duke of Saxony and others were the targets of its active wooing.

But with the exception of Otto III, Duke of Swabia and Ludwig, Duke of Thuringia, the rest of the people did not actively move closer to the imperial family at all, and the power of the Emperor's party was still weak, so that Agnes had to seek the help of the Germanic nobility abroad.

At this time, the Queen Mother Agnes discovered Maurice. Welf, who is both the last descendant of the great family Welf and the son of Ezzo II, Duke of Lombardy, Italy, has great value for wooing.

The Welf family, which once owned two crowns of Burgundy and Italy, and whose territory had spread throughout Anjou, Burgundy, Switzerland, Bavaria, Verona, Italy and other places, is the oldest and most noble Germanic family, and it is also a marriage with the kings of the Carolingian dynasty for several generations, and the blood flowing in each Welf is extremely noble.

This was also evidenced by the revival of the Welf family, which a hundred years later was not only capable of competing with the Hohenstaufen dynasty and Frederick I the Redbeard of Barbarossa, but also the Holy Roman Empire.

At this point, even if it had declined to the point that only the last member of the family remained, as long as Maurice . . . Welf bears the name of the Welf family, and he has a very important use value, using the name of the Welf family, Agnes is enough to win over a large number of Germanic nobles to her allegiance.

Agnes of Poitu didn't think that poaching Welf would be protected by William, but compared to the illusory revenge, Agnes valued Welf more, not to mention that the Queen Mother Agnes also had a deep grudge against William.

The family of the Queen Mother Agnes, the Poitou family, who had ruled the Poitou, Aquitaine and Gascony for generations, reached their peak under William VIII, but as William led the Normans south to Farasi, all of the Poitou family was almost completely stripped of their possessions, and William VIII died of illness in William's dungeon.

With the death of William VIII, the last male of the Poitou family, the Poitou family was also declared extinct, and it is not surprising that when Agnes and her cousin Anse died, the Poitou family would be completely destroyed.

With such hatred of the dead clan, the Queen Mother Agnes would not consider whether William would retaliate at all, perhaps in her opinion, this is something that cannot be desired.

William decided to contact the nouveau riche of the Holy Roman Empire, and Ano II, who had just been granted the position of Archbishop of Cologne, joined forces with him against the reign of Empress Dowager Agnes.

In the eyes of ordinary people, he was awarded the important position of Archbishop of Cologne, the three major bishops of the empire, and he should be grateful to the Empress Dowager Agnes, how could he collude with William to oppose Empress Agnes together?

But Wilhelm, who was well versed in history, knew that the former court priest of Henry III, who had opposed King Andrei I of Hungary with his monarch, and was now the leader and leader of the Emperor's party, had great ambitions in his heart.

Historically, in April 1062, seven or eight years later, Archbishop Anno staged a coup d'état against Empress Agnes and Henry IV, taking control of Henry IV's mother and son in one fell swoop.

Together with his allies, the Archbishop of Bremen and the Archbishop of Mainz, Archbishop Anno abolished Queen Agnes' regency and guardianship of Henry IV, appointed himself regent, and took away Henry IV's guardianship.

Archbishop Anno then forced Henry IV to marry Bertha, daughter of Otto I, Count of Savoy, against Henry IV's wishes.

Therefore, after Henry IV came to power, he was extremely disgusted with Archbishop Anno and tried to divorce his queen, but Pope Alexander II at that time did not agree, which was also an important reason for the later struggle between Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII.

During his regency, Archbishop Anno II of Cologne not only tried to support his papal candidate for pope, but also sought the ordination of Archbishop Trier for his nephew Conrad.

Through the personal experience of Anno II, it can be seen that this person was a person with an extremely strong desire for power, which no one at that time expected.

Prior to this, Anno was a simple priest, living an ascetic life and treating people generously, however, when he became the Archbishop of Cologne, he became an ambitious, even unscrupulous ruler, for the benefit of his archbishop.

Not only Agnes, who appointed him Archbishop of Cologne, looked away, but also the other nobles, as well as the nobles of the Emperor's party.

William, who knew of Anno's experience, had already sent someone to pay attention to his information, and this person had made him one of the great pawns of the Holy Roman Empire.

Judging from the intelligence network arranged around Anno, Anno's apparent ambitions began to swell a year after he became the Archbishop of Cologne, and his first attempt was to try to occupy the prosperous monastery of Maldi in order to challenge the authority of the Imperial Church, although in the end it failed and caused many controversies.

Subsequently, Anno founded the Benedictine monastery of Michaelsburg in Bamberg, modeled on the abbey of Fruttuaria in Italy, which soon developed into the center of Cluny monastic reform in Germany.

In the face of interests and power, after receiving William's contact, Anno and William soon connected with each other, and the correspondence between the two sides became more and more frequent.