Miklós Kásler - Zoltán Szentirmay (szerk.): Identifying the Árpád Dynasty Skeletons Interred in the Matthias Church. Applying data from historical, archaeological, anthropological, radiological, morphological, radiocarbon dating and genetic research (Budapest, 2021)
CHAPTER TWO – Historical background
it is more likely that by burying Álmos at Székesfehérvár, he elevated him to the level of Kálmán the Learned, making in fact a sort of selflegitimizing gesture, which he further reinforced by designating the Basilica as his final resting place, where the ill-fated 32-year old blind king was buried not long after, at the end of the winter of 1141. Béla II had to express the legitimacy of his own rule by every possible means, being the first Hungarian ruler who - though by no fault of his own - had ascended to the throne without being fit for actual governance. Furthermore, it was not entirely clear that he should wear the royal crown. The childless István II designated his maternal brother-in-law, Saul (the son of Kálmán the Learned’s daughter, Princess Sophia) to be his successor, but by 1129 he was informed that the blind Prince Béla was hiding in Pécsvárad. István II had Béla brought to his court and arranged for him to marry the Grand Prince of Serbia’s daughter, Helena. He did this in order to try to reconcile the Kálmán-line and the Álmos-line. The blind prince’s marriage was fertile, and of his six children one was born before his ascension to the throne: Géza, later King Géza II (1141-1162), was born in 1130. László was born in the first half of 1131 (during the changing of kings) and would later become László II (1162-1163). Next in turn was István, who later became the pretender István IV (1163). While Saul would not have been the first ruler who was related to the Árpáds through a maternal line, his claim to the throne was not strong enough against a rival related through a paternal line, and thus, Béla II was crowned in April 1131 at Székesfehérvár. After his ascension to the throne, Queen Helena had the 68 nobles on whose advice Álmos and Béla had been blinded executed and their fortune distributed among the churches (Figure 8). 43
