I am Matilda of Canossa—born in 1046, la Gran Contessa, ruling Tuscany’s passes and fortresses when Italy was a battlefield of crowns and popes. I stood with the reform papacy in the Investiture Controversy, trusting Gregory VII when emperors demanded obedience. In 1077, at my castle of Canossa, Henry IV came through snow to seek absolution after excommunication—history’s winter of humiliation. I fought to hold the line: in 1084 my forces won at Sorbara near Modena, shaking the pro-imperial lord