On November 18, 1186, at the age of only 36, William II died. His premature death greatly reduced the political, cultural and religious projects he had planned for Monreale. The Cathedral and the abbey suffered a period of neglect, caused mainly by the sudden rise of the Hohenstaufen family after the marriage of William’s aunt and posthumous daughter of Roger II, Constance of Hauteville, to Frederick I Barbarossa’s son, Henry VI. Even the Archbishopric, with its strong function, remained the prerogative of the Sicilian nobility, losing its supremacy as a centre for the spread of Latin civilisation and the Christian religion.
