Duke He was an adventurous youth. Having no expectation of reaching the throne during the reign of his uncle
Soběslav I, he moved to
Bavaria. He returned at the death of Soběslav in 1140 and, with the help of his brother-in-law, the
king of Germany,
Conrad III, he was elected Duke of Bohemia by the Bohemian nobility. At first, Vladislav had to contend with the claims of his cousin, the son of Soběslav who was also named Vladislav. At Soběslav's request,
Emperor Lothair II recognised the rights of his son at the Diet of
Bamberg in May 1138. Then, in June, the nobility affirmed them at
Sadská. Another diet at Bamberg confirmed the succession of the son of Vladislav, however, in April 1140. The local dukes
Conrad II of Znojmo, Vratislaus II of Brno, and Otto III of Olomouc, gave him trouble. They were excommunicated by
Jindřich Zdík, bishop of
Olomouc, who was then driven out of his diocese. The territorial dukes then defeated Vladislav through treason at Vysoká on 22 April 1142, but their siege of Prague failed. Vladislav kept his throne with the assistance of
Conrad III of Germany, whose half-sister Gertrude of Babenberg he married. In 1147, Vladislav accompanied Conrad on the
Second Crusade, but halted his march at
Constantinople and subsequently returned. On his way back to Bohemia, he passed through
Kiev and
Kraków. After the election of
Frederick Barbarossa to succeed Conrad in 1152, Vladislav was summoned to attend a diet at
Merseburg in May 1152. According to
Vincent of Prague, he refused and sent Bishop
Daniel of Prague as his representative instead. In October 1155, he met Frederick near the Bohemian border. He attended Frederick's wedding to
Beatrice of Burgundy in
Würzburg in June 1156. It was there that he and Frederick reached an agreement whereby Vladislav would take part in Frederick's upcoming Italian expedition and Frederick would raise Vladislav to the kingship.
King On 11 January 1158, the secret arrangement of 1156 was put into effect at an imperial diet in
Regensburg. Frederick crowned Vladislav with a
diadem (called by the chroniclers a
diadema or
circulus) evidently distinct from his own
imperial crown. On 18 January he issued a privilege to Vladislav regulating his use of the crown and other insignia. Frederick made the grant of the royal title and crown in perpetuity, but they were not used after Vladislav's abdication. Upon the latter's return to Bohemia, the aristocracy strongly opposed both his commitment to campaigning in Italy and his unilateral amendment to the Bohemian constitution. They acquiesced only when he agreed to assume the costs of the Italian expedition himself. He was also invested with
Upper Lusatia at Regensburg. He duly accompanied Frederick to
Milan in 1158. His coronation was celebrated in a second ceremony at Milan on 8 September. Vladislav was a firm ally of the emperor Frederick. During the Italian expeditions of 1161, 1162, and 1167, Vladislav entrusted the command of the Czech contingent to his brother Duke
Děpold I of Jamnitz and his son
Frederick. After the revolt of the Moravian dukes, Vladislav gradually took control of the strongholds of
Moravia:
Brno with the death of Vratislaus II in 1156, Olomouc with the death of Otto III (in spite of the claims of Soběslav, the son of Duke Soběslav, who was imprisoned), and finally
Znojmo with the death of Conrad II. Vladislav also intervened in Hungary in 1163 on behalf of the emperor. He married his second son, Sviatopluk, to a Hungarian princess and had diplomatic contact with Emperor
Manuel I Comnenus of
Byzantium. In 1167, Daniel I, bishop of Prague since 1148 and Vladislav's greatest advisor, died. As a result, relations between the kings of Bohemia and Germany were strained. When his son Adalbert (
Vojtěch) III became
archbishop of Salzburg in 1169, the emperor suspected him of supporting
Pope Alexander III. ==Abdication==