Bahahahahahaha I asked and subsequently received!

Lombardy in the 11th century was an interesting place. In fact, the whole of Italy was an interesting place, just think that halfway through the previous century, the German Kaiser Otto had found himself drawn into a convoluted situation involving a runaway bride, the murder of the King of Italy, and the union of Friulian and Piedmontese lines pretending to the Iron Crown. Great fun, but to cut a long story short, know Otto was crowned King of Italy in 962.

Now tenth- and eleventh-century notions of "Lombardy" and "Italy" were somewhat convoluted: "Lombardia" by the eleventh century was used to denote the bulk of Northwestern Italy; a much larger area than the modern Italian administrative division. Characterized by a complex hydrography consisting a series of parallel waterways flowing down the Alps across a broad plain to the river Po, Lombardy was the densest and most urbanized region of Italy. Curiously, it had been largely absent from the near-endemic civil strife that had catarterized Italian politics prior to Otto's intervention.

Why? The explanation is rather simple. Much like the rest of post-Carolingian Europe, Lombardy too had been assigned a Margrave whose office quickly became dynastic. However, this dynasty, the Obertenghi, were surprisingly passive. In fact, the title of King of Italy had only ever been contested in a convoluted back-and-forth between the Guideschi, a dynastic party from the rugged highlands of Central Italy, the Aleramici, hailing from the hummocky western foothills of the Alps, and the Unruochings, from the northeast. In short, areas peripheral to the old Lombard heartland around Milan and Pavia.

This is somewhat predictable: the farther a Magrave was from the center of power (and the farther royal envoys had to travel to check up on them) the more autonomy they had, affording them time to husband resources away from prying eyes and plot bids for usurpation. But vitally, it's also important to understand that the densely populated and urbanized heartlands of the Po basin sustained a stable (some would argue growing!) population living in cities, where only with difficulty authority could be concentrated in the hands of a single person. Royal representatives and margraves alike had to contend with clergymen, judges, and lawmakers seated in the cities who were elected, in the Roman fashion, by colleges of prominent citizens. Indeed, thousands of large and medium sized landowners split their time between country estates and urban residences, while small farmers, aided by the shallow waterways crossing the plain and a weak legal precedent for obligations to their landlord, regularly traveled to town in order to bring their goods to market and purchase finished goods made by urban artisans, all contributing to the liveliness and bustle of urban life. This led to a paradoxical situation where if we consider there was anarchy in the border marches where single strongmen reigned supreme, in the the urban heartland where no one person was unquestionably in charge there was law, order, and prosperity. So, with that lengthy introduction out of the way, let's dive in.