The chief protagonist in the fragments of the Old Czech Alexandreida is usually interpreted as a hero embodying the virtues of a sovereign. This study offers an alternative reading in a comparison with Gautier de Châtillon’s Alexandreida and Ulrich von Etzenbach’s Alexander. The passages set in Troy, Jerusalem and Libya show that the Old Bohemian Alexander rises high only to fall again. This fall is not brought about by any prideful intemperance, as in other versions, but takes the form of a betrayal of the sovereign ruler, the Lord, which mirrors the betrayal to which succumbed Alexander’s father Philip and is underpinned by the fickleness of Alexander’s gigantesque heart.
Three vernacular texts from late-13th-century Bohemia, in Middle High German and Old Czech, integrate motifs associated with the Holy Land, pilgrimage and the crusades. The romance Wilhalm von Wenden manifests the late Přemyslids’ royal ideology by portraying an independent, pious ruler who derives authority from Jerusalem. The Alexandreis explores the psychology of a military expedition to provide ground for moral reflection and draws on cartography to exploit the symbolism of Jerusalem’s geographic centrality. The crusade-related details in the Legend of Saint James the Less attest to an informed use of intertextual practices.