Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor

Otto II, called the Red (955–983), was the sole surviving son of Otto the Great and Adelaide. Crowned co-emperor in 967, he succeeded his father in 973 and married the Byzantine princess Theophanu.

He crushed a revolt by his Bavarian kinsman Henry the Wrangler, then campaigned in southern Italy, where he was disastrously defeated near Crotone in 982. In 983 a Slav rising drove the Empire back beyond the Elbe, and he died that December, aged twenty-eight, leaving the throne to his three-year-old son Otto III.