Sigurðr slembidjákn

Sigurd Slembe — the 'sham-deacon' — is one of the relentless claimants who kept Norway's civil wars burning. A man of royal blood (or so he claimed) who had taken minor orders, hence his mocking by-name, he came home pressing a share of the throne and, when refused, took it by murder: he and his men broke into King Harald Gille's lodging at night, killed the watchman, and cut the sleeping, drunken king down in his bed. The killing won him nothing but war — he allied even with the blinded Magnus, dragging the maimed ex-king about as a figurehead, and fought up and down the coast against Harald's faction for a few vicious, inconclusive seasons until he was taken and put to a slow and terrible death. Sigurd Slembe is the wars in miniature: a man of the blood, a murder, a desperate coalition, a grisly end — accomplishing nothing but more bloodshed, one more claimant burning himself out in a kingdom eating its own.