The Western Roman Empire was conquered by Odoacer, who styled himself as the "King of Italy." But the leader of the Ostrogoths, a warrior named Theodoric, would challenge Odoacer for supremacy. But were both men just playing into the hands of the Eastern Roman Emperor?
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Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky Listener discretion advised. For two and a half years, the Italian city of Revenna had been in a living hell, under siege by the king of the Visigoths, Theodoric the Great. Theodoric would hold the city in siege for as long as it took. His greatest enemy, Odoasser, the King of Italy, was hiding in Revenna with what was left of his army. Theodoric had him surrounded. He had been surrounded for two and a half years. It was only a matter of time, But in the meantime, Revenna was suffering starvation, gripped the streets, Plagues haunted whole neighborhoods. Even an earthquake erupted in the middle of town, as though God himself were showing just how folly it was to hope that the siege would end. But on February twenty fifth, four hundred and ninety three, the citizens of Ravina finally saw a glimmer of hope. Oduasser finally emerged from his foxhole. He sent word to Theodoric to begin negotiations. After a week, plenty of concessions and even the begging of a bishop, the two men came to an agreement they would rule Italy together. The crowds of Ravenna erupted in celebration. The siege was over. Not all, hope was lost after all. Theodoric entered the city at the head of a procession and the two leaders finally met in person. The two men collaborated together to determine what this knew Italy would look like in Italy with co rulers in Italy of peace. Ten days after Theodoric entered the city, Oduaser was taking a stroll outside one of his palaces. On his stroll, two beggars approached him, and they implored their lord to offer a blessing or alms. Before Oduaser could even respond, the two beggars pulled aside their cloaks and seized Oduaser by his arms. Soldiers poured out hidden among the street, and they cut down Oduaser's bodyguards. Oduaser was surprised to find that none of the attackers had specifically attacked him. His guards were dead, but he wasn't yet. The men were keeping him alive for now, but why. The answer came quickly. Someone specific wanted to be the one to cut him down. Out of the darkness. A figure of approached wielding a sword. Oduaser saw his own death written all over the face of his assassin. He just didn't expect the face to look so familiar. I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood. In five hundred and eleven, a few decades after Oduaser was assassinated, an Italian monk took to compiling the memories of his music master, Saint Severinus. Severinus was renowned as a holy man in his lifetime, a devoted ascetic with mysterious origins. When the Western Roman Empire collapsed in four hundred and seventy six, Severinus accepted refugees into his monastery. He fed the poor and clothed the sick. The monk Eugippius was resolved to document and commemorate those selfless acts. But there was more to Severiz than his generosity. The holy man, like other early saints, professed seeing visions of the future. Eugippius wrote that sometime before the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Severihinus met with a ragtag band of warriors who were crossing into Austria. They were led by a skinny young man in shabby clothes who bore the name Odoacer Gothic for he who maintains his property, a stately name for such a poor traveler. Supposedly, according to the writings of Eugyppius, Saint Severihinus took Odoacer aside and proclaimed a vision that this unknown warrior would one day rule as king of Rome. We can't know what impression this left on the young man, or even if the interaction happened at all, but if it did, we might get that Odoacer went on his way believing, probably like every other ambitious warrior of his age, that destiny was on his side. Odoacer was born in four hundred and thirty three. His exact origins are unknown, but we do know that he learned to fight and lead with the Hunnic army that sat menacingly on the Roman Empire's borders. The Huns subjected many of the ethnic groups that the Romans referred to as quote barbarians, and like other imperial overlords, they found a way of recruiting soldiers and even lieutenants from those same subjugated populations. Oduwaser's father, Ettica, happened to be one of those lieutenants. He was considered such a valuable ally to the Huns that he was eventually made a member of Attila the Hun's prestigious personal bodyguard. When the Roman emperor solicited Ata's support to assassinate Attila, Ettica loyal soldier that he was alerted Attila of the conspiracy. Oduaser turned up in Italy by the time he was twenty eight. The Italian peninsula had gone through some major shifts in the last two hundred years, and it is incredibly complicated, but to simplify for the sake of this podcast, the Italian peninsula had formerly been the beating heart of a vast and dominant Roman Empire. But the Italy that Oduaser entered was one in perpetual crisis, where generals competed against one another to prop up their own emperors as figureheads. The armies that fought in these crises were the very barbarian warriors that the Romans had demonized in centuries prior. In the five years from four hundred seventy one to four hundred seventy six, the Western Empire gained and lost five emperors. I say Western Empire here because in three hundred ninety five the Roman Empire was split into two parts with two separate imperial courts to make it easier to manage. People at the time wouldn't have called themselves Eastern or Western. Those are only terms we use now looking back anyway. In the summer of four hundred and seventy five, the most recent general to win out in the Western Empire was a Roman aristocrat named Arrestes. He took control of the capital of the Western Empire, Ravenna. Arrestes elected his own son, Romulus, who was not older than fourteen, as emperor in the West. But Arrestes's army was only loyal as long as he was paying them, and eventually, when Arrestes wasn't able to confiscate and dole out land from Roman landowners, who he also relied on, his army grew restless and decided to choose another general to support. They chose Oduacer. On August twenty eighth, four hundred and seventy six, an army of defected warriors led by Odoacer captured Arrestes and defeated his remaining troops Oduaser swarmed the capital city of Ravenna and packed up the fourteen year old Emperor Romulus so he could live out the rest of his days in the countryside of southern Italy. Nothing up until this point was out of the ordinary. As usual, a barbarian warrior led a coalition of troops, deposed the emperor and captured the capital city. All that was left to do for Oduaser was for him to nominate his own puppet emperor or assume the title himself. It would be difficult for the Roman senate at the time to stomach Oduaser as the emperor, being an illiterate northerner, but surprisingly it never came to that. Odoacer's men hailed him as King of Italy, and he happily accepted that title. The title king was a convenient way of justifying his rule over Italy without alienating a potential ally in the East. Oduaser styled himself as a vassal of the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno. A king, after all, was supposed to be less powerful than an emperor. But as much as Odoaser wanted to retain the status quo, there was no getting around the fact that something significant, unprecedented had just occurred. Italy had never been ruled by a king, a vassal of the Eastern Roman Emperor. After four hundred and fifty years, the Western Roman Empire had been formally swept away by a little known, illiterate man from the north. The year four hundred and seventy six has been treated by scholars as the end of a chapter in Roman history. In many traditional Western histories, it's treated as the end of the classical era and the beginning of the Medieval era, the fall of the Roman Empire, But in fact the abolition of the Western Empire didn't really change much in the everyday lives of peasants, merchants, or even elites. Italy certainly wasn't any more stable after this slight political shift. Oduwaser ruled on shaky foundations. He led a multi ethnic confederation of soldiers that were only loyal to him so long as he provided them land. He had no remarkable reputation as a warrior in his own right. Some upstarts in his army thought themselves better and launched mutinies in four hundred and seventy seven and four hundred seventy eight Zeno understood better than anyone that Odoacer didn't really intend to obey the Eastern Empire. Zeno Eggdon, a nearby Germanic king, to launch an attack against Odoacer. The attack failed, but rather than retaliating against Zeno, Odoacer sent a portion of his spoils to Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Empire, in a show of peace. It didn't matter. If Zeno couldn't assert control over Italy this way, he would surely find another way. There is another version of the Saint Severinus prophecy story, one with an additional prediction that, even if it were true, he probably wouldn't have told the young Odoacer. In that version, Severihinus predicted that the future king wouldn't rule Italy longer than fourteen years, either by coincidence or by intelligent design, or by most likely fake sources changed after the fact. Odoacer lost the throne in exactly the fourteenth year of his rule to a man who had the support of a prophecy of his own. Before they even ever met. Odoacer's story was strangely intermingled with theodoricx Odowasser's father, Edica, eventually left the Huntic army to lead his own band of warriors. So did Theodoric's uncle, an Ostrogoth ruler, who settled in Pannonia or what is now the North Balkans after the death of Attila the Hunt. Theodoric was born on the banks of a small sea in what is now the easternmost part of Austria. His father, Twidemir, was a royal, but his mother was a concubine, though that mixed lineage never posed a problem for the Ostrogoths. For Theodoric's family, all that mattered and a king was that he had some claim to royal lineage and that he could fight. Theodomir and his brother Valimir almost certainly fought in their own battles, a compelling symbol of their right to rule. In contrast to Roman emperors at the time, who deferred to their generals from the comfort of their seaside palaces, the brothers Valimir and Theodomir had more than just cultural reasons to detest their more powerful Roman neighbors. According to a new treaty, the Ostrogoths would be allowed to settle on Roman land and would be given three hundred pounds of gold per year, but in return they would need to send a male hostage of royal descent, someone who the Romans could use as leverage in case future negotiations ever went south. Valimir didn't have a son, so he called upon his brother to make the sacrifice. The seven year old Theotre Doric was chosen to live in Constantinople for what would end up being a decade. Constantinople in the fifth century was the most cosmopolitan city in the Mediterranean, home to hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, dozens of languages, and several creeds. In Theodoric's youth, he learned to read and write not only in Latin, but also in Greek. He attended the imperial court, witnessed Roman ceremonies, and learned to keep his heretical faith secret. Roman citizens couldn't quite decide what to make of Theodoric. He was a Gothic boy from a barbarian family of war lords who could also recite prose in Latin. Though while Theodoric was making an impression in the imperial capital, his uncle and father existed in a constant state of warfare. It was Roman imperial policy to pit the Germanic tribes of Pannonia against one another. In the most recent cycle of violence, the Shii conducted raids against the Ostrogoths in the mid four hundred and sixties. It was during one such trade that Theodoric's uncle Valimir reportedly fell from his horse and died. Theodoric's father, Theodomir, took the throne and in four hundred and sixty nine, in revenge, besieged the Sharian stronghold of Bolia, winning despite opposition from the Eastern Roman emperor. In a twist of fate, at the same time, it was Oduaser's father, Edica, who was leading the Shii, while Theodoric's father obviously was leading the Ostrogoths. Edica, Oduaser's father, was killed in that battle, and, according to some sources and sources that I'm sure would make an excellent scene in a biopic, Oduwasser witnessed the death of his father on the battle field. Theodomir won Pannonia for the Ostrogoths, but that victory was tainted by the fact that Pannonia didn't have much fertile land for his people to settle on. He left in four hundred and seventy to conduct raids in the north. When he returned a year later, he was surprised to find his son, Theodoric, released from captivity. At seventeen years old. Theodoric was no longer a scrawny boy, but the spitting image of a young, capable leader. Without his father's knowledge, Theodoric raised a force of six thousand warriors and single handedly crushed the nearby Sarmatian people, personally killing their king. Whether or not we can trust that exaggerated account, what's clear is that Theodoric was eager to prove himself in the eyes of his Gothic family. Clearly, ten years in the imperial capital did not dampen his resolve to lead his own people, even if that meant, or perhaps especially if it meant spilling blood with his own hands. Decades later, Theodoric would trace the start of his own reign to that victory over the Sarmatians. It's no small feat that Theodoric assumed leadership over the Ostrogoths unopposed when his father died in four hundred and seventy four. It's even more remarkable that Theodoric held his position despite the constant poverty and insecurity his people faced. There was never enough fertile land in Pannonia or Macedonia for them to grow crops or feed livestock. The situation was so bad that Theodoric's uncle Vidimir had taken his own tribe westward in hopes of greener pastures. If Theodoric was to feed and clothe his army of ten thousand warriors, he would need to win imperial favor. That would prove a difficult task, especially because there was another Gothic king, a man named Strabo, who was in the picture. Some years earlier. Strabo won an annual shipment of two thousand pounds of gold after intimidating Constantinople, almost as much as Attila the hun had once received in tribute. The Eastern emperor also bequeathed Strabo with the title Supreme Commander of the Goths, which Theodoric did not take particularly well. An opportunity presented itself to Theodoric in four hundred and seventy four, when the sitting emperor died and a succession crisis unfolded between two upstarts. Strabo had thrown his support behind the losing party, and Theodoric, either by luck or prophecy, happened to choose the winning one, a man we've already met Zeno. When Zeno took control of the Eastern Empire in fours one hundred and seventy six, Zeno immediately deposed Strabo and elevated Theodoric to the position of supreme commander of the Goths, and even adopted Theodoric as his quote son in arms. But nice as they were, none of those tokens of support meant that the Ostrogoths were free from want. Around four hundred and seventy seven, Zeno ordered Theodoric to crush Strabo, who was holed up in a mountain pass, and in return, Zeno would give Theodoric enough grain for his people to last the winter. Zeno promised the Ostrogoths Roman soldiers, but when Theodoric came to the field of battle, the imperial forces were nowhere to be found. Zeno had lied, but Theodoric was intent on continuing the fight. Strabo, on the other hand, offered terms of peace, and Theodoric's followers implored their leader not to engage in battle again people they considered their kin. Theodoric's forty thousand troops laid down their arms, and the two Gothic leaders issued joint demands against Zeno for grain and status. Zeno was furious and frightened at the possibility of a united enemy. He sent messengers promising one thousand pounds of gold and ten thousand pounds of silver in addition to his daughter's hand in marriage, if Theodoric could defeat Strabo. Theodoric refused, but Zeno made a similar offer to Strabo in secret, which was, unfortunately for Theodoric accepted. From four hundred and seventy seven to four hundred and eighty, Theodoric had lost his title as a supreme commander, he lost his ability to feed his people, and he lost his lucrative alliance with the Eastern Roman Empire. His people were on the run, traveling in baggage trains that allegedly stretched for miles, pillaging cities for survival along their trail. In four hundred and eighty, a Roman general successfully raided Theodoric's baggage train, capturing some two thousand wagons and five thousand prisoners, nearly abducting Theodoric's own mother and brother. But the following year, Theodoric's fortunes reversed. Strabo accidentally fell from his horse and impaled himself on a lance while riding. Suddenly, his Gothic coalition descended into chaos, and even though Strabo's son won some control over what remained, there was no doubt that theodoricx Ostrogoths were the most powerful players in the region. Again, Zeno had no option but to court Theodoric's favor. He once again granted Theodoric the title of Supreme Commander in four hundred and eighty three, and even elevated him to the prestigious position of Roman Consul in four hundred and eighty four, which was the highest possible distinction that a Goth could receive from the Empire, but just to make his status secure, just in case, Theodoric also murdered Strabo's son in broad daylight. Theodoric's people won permission to settle the fertile land to the west of Constantinople, and to top it all off, Xeno erected a statue of Theodoric atop a battle horse right in the center of the imperial castle. But as expected, the fickle Zeno once again changed his mind, worried that Theodoric might betray him, and he sent an army against Theodoric in four hundred and eighty five. Theodoric responded by pillaging nearby towns and even besieging Constantinople, going so far as cutting off the city's drinking water. In four hundred and eighty eight, the two leaders finally came together and recognized that they could not both occupy the same territory in peace. It would be better for everyone if Theodoric took his roaming Gothic army out west. Zeno had wanted to depose Oduasser for some time, and who better to do the job than the unrelenting Ostrogoth Theodoric. Two birds with one stone. If Theodoric successfully defeated Oduaser, Zeno would grant him the illustrious title of Patricius, a status normally reserved for the most elite Roman citizens. In truth, Theodoric didn't need all that much convincing to leave. Even when times were good, the emperor's payments only came irregularly. His people continued to go hungry in infertile pastures. Many of them were uprooted from these sedentary lives of their forefathers. Theodoric knew better than any leader that the only thing worse than a hungry population was a hungry population with no one to fight and nowhere to go. According to the Chronicles, which should always be taken with a grain of salt, Theodoric set out from Macedonia at the head of one hundred thousand people. While we refer to all of them as Ostrogoths, they were in fact a motley mix of displaced people, many Germanic who scraped by to survive in times of nearly constant crisis. Some of them may have been lured by the growing legend of Theodoric, the man who had slayed a king as a teenager and brought the city of Constantinople to its knees. To contemporaries, Theodoric was a fairly unique leader, not quite a Barbarian king and not quite a Roman prince. We can imagine that Theodoric r his renown. He marched the thousand kilometers into Italy, intent on fulfilling his destiny. In the dead of winter four hundred and eighty eight, Oduasser, king of Italy, received a message that sent a shiver down his spine. To the northeast of Italy, a Germanic people known as the Gepids ruled an independent kingdom, which they proudly defended after decades of Hunnik rule and Roman incursions. Unfortunately for the Gepids, they lived on the road to Italy. Oduaser got a message that an army of about twenty thousand warriors commissioned by the Emperor Zeno crushed the once proud Gepid people and killed their king. Odoacer knew what was coming next. Zeno would certainly be sending an army to dethrone him. That much was clear when the emperor refined used Odoacer's white flags, which came to Constantinople in the form of chests of gold. But what Odoacer could not have predicted was that the famed warmonger Theodoric was at the army's helm at the battle against the Gepids in four hundred and eighty eight. When it seemed like the Goths might lose, Theodoric heroically led the charge that turned the tides. The fifth century bishop Inodius wrote an embellished account of the battle addressed directly to Theodoric. As a torrent devastates crops, as a lion devastates flocks, So did you devastate no one who met you could resist or escape your pursuit. You were transported everywhere as the spears ran out, Yet your rage still grew for you, venerable one who has sought out the savior of battle, unaccompanied, drove forward, Fortified by thousands, Oduacer wasted no time preparing for what he knew was an incoming invasion. He fortified a bridge over the river Isonzo, which Theodoric would need to pass in order to reach Italy proper, but that didn't do much to slow the invaders. Oduaser retreated to the city of Verona, but there too, the Ostrogoths overwhelmed Odoaser's forces. One of our few sources for an account of the battle comes from that bishop and Odius, but his text is particularly problematic because not only was he not an eyewitness to the events, but his intention for writing at all was to make Theodoric fit the mold of Greek and Roman heroes from legends past, like Achilles in the Iliad. Before the Battle of Verona, Theodoric turns to his mother and sister to bid them farewell, where he presents himself as a selfless hero duty bound to make good on his family's royal name. It looks like the battle might be won by Odoaser's forces, but Theodoric's arrival once again personally turned the tide. But Odoacer managed to wriggle free from his enemy's grasp and live to fight another day. At this point, it seemed to most observers that Theodoric would surely conquer all of Italy. Opportunistic warlords took advantage of Odoacer's weakness to invade Sicily in the south and the Alps in the north. Even Odowasser's chief general briefly defected to Theodoric's side. Archaeologists have excavated coins from this period during Oduaser's rule. These silver pieces bear a portrait of a bare headed king entitled Flavius Oduaser, meaning Odouaser, servant of the Emperor. No Germanic king before him had minted silver coins, let alone coins in the style of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, Oduaser elevated his son Thela to the position of caesar of the West. Now some of this is a little strange. Why would Oduaser be concerning himself with the prestige of coins and titles at the very moment that control was very literally slipping from his grasp. Did he truly believe that the prophecy was on his side, that he would in the end prevail, Or did he decide, after suffering defeat after defeat that if he couldn't actually have an empire to himself, he could at least pretend through trappings. Any chances Oduaser had of victory were crushed. On August eleventh, four hundred and ninety one year from the start of the invasion, the two sides met at a river outside Milan, and both suffered enormous losses in a battle that Theodoric technically won. The Ostrogoths pursued Oduaser all the way to his capital city, Ravena, where they established a camp in a pine grove just outside the city walls. There was no way Theodoric could storm the city, which sat in the middle of the lagoon, so he dug in for a siege. He ordered his army to block all land routes to the city, cutting off access to food and water. Meanwhile, his men, as with many other invading armies in Italy's history, rampaged across the nearby countryside, searching for supplies and families to enslave. We can't accurately portray the toll that the invasion took on the people living in Italy at the time, but some sources refer to their suffering in passing mass famines in the north, Thousands abducted and held for ransom, Whole cities displaced by pillaging warriors on both sides. Those that fled for their lives mainly ended up in Rome, but the Church could feed only so many hungry mouths. Rumors spread like wildfire that the war signaled the coming of the Antichrist. Needless to say, these accounts temper the usual depiction of Theodoric as a great and selfless, almost godlike ruler. In fact, like all other kings of the era, he was just as ruthless, just as power hungry, and just as callous as the worst of them. That was a lesson that Oduaser was about to learn. The siege that started in the summer of four hundred and ninety became utterly intolerable for the citizens of Ravena by the middle of four hundred and ninety two, when Theodore Yorick used ships to block the city's access to the sea, it was official the city was fully surrounded. No supplies were getting in or out, and the city barely had enough to last the year. It's reported that at the start of four hundred and ninety three, the citizens of Ravena resorted to eating weeds and leather. Oduwaser requested to begin negotiations in February, though Theodoric would only agree if Oduwaser sent his son Theyla as a hostage. What choice did Oduaser have. He sent his son, and bargaining commenced on February twenty fifth, four hundred and ninety three. Messengers scurried back and forth between Ravena and Theodoric's encampment. Even the local bishop traveled between both sides, imploring both men for an end to the hostilities. After nearly four years of civil war in Italy, of pillaged towns and scorched fields, Theodoric and Odoacer came to an agreement they would resurrect the Western Roman Empire and rule it jointly. On March fifth, Theodoric and his retinue paraded into Ravena, no doubt full of applauding citizens hopeful for the future. Perhaps it was an especially meaningful day for the few followers who remembered that Theodoric's father had defeated and possibly killed Odoacer's father in battle some three decades before history did not have to repeat itself. Vendettas could turn into truces, sieges, into celebrations. The two co emperors communicated daily in the first week of this new chapter in Roman history. In the midst of the buzz, Oduaser decided to visit a palace in the city known as the Laurel Grove. This was March fifteenth. As he was taking a stroll, Odoacer was approached by two shrouded beggars who were asking for help from their imperial master. But, as you might recall from the introduction, before he could respond, the two men grabbed his arms, and a swarm of Ostrogothic soldiers made quick work of Odoacer's bodyguards. Then, out of the shadows, a middle aged man appeared with the sword drawn. It was Theodoric himself. The famed warrior took his blade and slashed Oduaser from the collar bone to the hip, at which point Oduaser yelled out, where is God. According to one probably apocryphal source, Theodoric murdered Oduaser, his co emperor, in a single stroke, as predicted by Saint Severinus. Odoacer's reign as king of Italy ended after fourteen years. Strangely, it's reported that Theodoric shouted, this is exactly what you did to my relatives at the dying Oduacer. We have no record of Oduaser killing a relative of Theodorics. Instead, we do have a record of Theodoric's father killing Odoacer's father. In all likelihood, Theodoric was using whatever justification he could to carry out the execution. In fact, the assassination was just one part in a meticulously planned massacre in which Oduaser's chief lieutenants were all shot down. Within the city, soldiers chased Oduaser's brother into a church, where they were prevented from slaying him according to the rules of sanctuary, but they technically didn't need to be inside the church to kill him with arrows. Soldiers captured Odoacer's mother and threw her in prison, where she died of starvation. Theodoric released Odoacer's son, Thela, but he too was eventually hunted down. There would be no joint rule in Theodoric's new Italy. He had spent too long managing his relationships with anxious emperors and fickle allies. After all, a Gothic king proved his right to rule by the blood on his hands, not the treaties he signed. And what greater show of might than to bend prophecy to your will. That's the story of Odoacer and Theodoric. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about how Theodoric story specific evolved into one very particular folk legend. Theodoric ruled for thirty three years after his betrayal of Oduaser. Contemporary chronicles treat the new king of Italy as an enlightened ruler. He settled his people in the north of Italy, revived games in the Colosseum, and even rebuilt some of Rome's monuments. He styled himself heir to the Roman imperial throne, but never lost his mantle as king of the Ostrogoths. He went as far as to conquer Spain and North Africa. But Theodoric's legend far exceeded his century. For one thousand years following his rule, Theodoric's legend seeped into Central European popular culture and literature. His history slowly evolved into the myth of a German hero named Dietrich von Berne. While Theodoric came to Italy as an invader from Pannonia, the legendary Dietrich was born in Verona and reclaimed Italy as its rightful heir. Theodoric conquered fearsome Germanic foes on his path to a kingdom in Italy, but those foes were all merely human. Dietrich fought giants, dragons, and worms. In some medieval texts. He has even described as a fire breather. As with many other oral traditions, Dietrich's story intermingled with other heroic narratives from Norse and German mythology. In one example, the Germanic hero Siegfried encounters a fire breathing Dietrich as he attempts to protect the princess crime Hilled. Stories like this are often depicted in tapestries that once adorned the halls of German nobility. One of Dietrich's most famous medieval stories begins with three giants sitting around complaining over the fact that Dietrich has won favor for his heroic deeds, whereas the giants never do. A queen approaches the leader of the giants, the giant named Ek, and requests that he bring Dietrich to her alive for the mission. The queen gives Ek armor and a sword, which have been soaked in dragon blood and thereby rendered unbeatable. Ek travels to the Alps and challenges Dietrich to a duel, but our hero refuses. The giant has done him no wrong. Eck calls him a coward, and that seals the deal. Dietrich pounces on him, but after a prolonged fight, he realizes that his foes dragon blood armor can't be penetrated. According to the myth, Dietrich is forced to dishonorably stab Act through a gap in his armor, at which point the leader of the giants dies, takes the armor and the sword for himself, and goes on to slay the remaining two giants after him. In some stories, the queen admits to having wanted the giant's slain all along. In another, the last giant treacherously leads Dietrich to murder the remaining giants in his family. One version of the myth an attempt to connect the fantastical Dietrich with the historical. Theodoric explains that the sword Dietrich one from Eck became the very blade that Dietrich used to murder Oduaser Oduaser, mortal man that he was was no match for a blade soaked in dragon's blood and its fire breathing master. Ow Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mank. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Shworts, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.