Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and the sea obey eternal laws.
Cognoscat omnis mundus quia inane et vile est potentia regum, nec est aliquis dignus regis nomine, nisi cui ad nutum coelum, terra, mare obediunt aeternis legibus.
Politicians
Cnut the Great
King of England (1016-1035), Denmark (1018-1035), and Norway (1028-1035), founder of the short-lived North Sea Empire that briefly united the Anglo-Scandinavian world. The Danish prince who conquered England as a teenage commander, he then governed it through cultural integration, marriage to Æthelred's widow Emma of Normandy, two pastoral letters to his English subjects (1019, 1027), and a pilgrimage to Rome for Conrad II's imperial coronation. Famous from the tide legend recorded by Henry of Huntingdon, he is also remembered for the execution of Eadric Streona and the heavy Danegeld levies — a king whose institutional achievements were matched by the political ruthlessness that founded them.
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