William II of Holland
Count of Holland and King of the Romans
William II (February 1227 – 28 January 1256) was the Count of Holland and Zeeland from 1234 until his death. He was elected anti-king of Germany in 1248 and ruled as sole king from 1254 onwards.
Early life
William was the eldest son and heir of Count Floris IV of Holland and Matilda of Brabant. When his father was killed at a tournament at Corbie, William was only seven years old. His paternal uncles William and Otto, bishop of Utrecht, were his guardians until 1239.
Kingship
With the help of his maternal uncle Duke Henry II of Brabant and the Cologne archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden, William was elected king of Germany after Emperor Frederick II was excommunicated by Pope Innocent IV. He succeeded Landgrave Henry Raspe of Thuringia who had died within a year after his election as anti-king in 1246.
The next year, William decided to extend his father's hunting residence to a palace which met his new status. This would later be called the Binnenhof (Inner Court) and was the beginning of the city of The Hague. Meanwhile, after a siege of five months, William besieged Aachen for six months before capturing it from Frederick's followers. Only then could he be crowned as king by Archbishop Konrad of Cologne.
“William II of Holland” enters the record as count of Holland and King of the Romans. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what William, Holland and Count can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“William II of Holland” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, William, Holland and Count provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q77255. VIAF identifies the subject as 59877564. The Library of Congress control number is no2007061547. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1227, 1256, 1234 and 1248.
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This entry incorporates text from “William II of Holland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.