You pass beneath the looming gatehouse and find yourself face to face with Jakob Rinkenberg, the Ærkebiskop af Lund — Archbishop of Lund, the most senior churchman in Denmark.

He is no gaudy Italian prelate draped in silk and jewels. His robe is of heavy black wool, lined at the collar with coarse fur against the Baltic chill. Instead of a towering mitre, a simple hood falls over his shoulders. In one hand he leans on a plain wooden crozier tipped with modest ironwork, its surface worn smooth by decades of use.

His clipped beard, streaked with grey, frames a face marked by long service and sharp intelligence. At about fifty years of age, he carries himself with the steadiness of a man used to both altar and council chamber. His gaze settles on you, hawk-like, weighing your worth.

Though Sweden has its own archbishop in Uppsala and Norway at Nidaros, it is Lund — the Danish see — that Queen Margaret trusted most. From here, the church gave her the legitimacy to bind three kingdoms under one crown.

He inclines his head. “Welcome, young envoy. Remember: we owe this union to Queen Margaret I. After the deaths of her husband and son, she gathered these crowns together with wit and iron will. And now she places them upon her great-nephew, Erik of Pomerania — a boy from a distant duchy on the southern Baltic coast. Few here trust him yet. You will need to help him earn their respect.”