John Parricida or John the Parricide, also called John of Swabia, was the son of the Habsburg duke Rudolf II of Austria.
Background
John was born shortly before or after the death of his father Rudolf II, the younger son of King Rudolf I of Germany. His mother was Agnes (Anežka) of Bohemia, daughter of the Přemyslid king Ottokar II of Bohemia. Consequently, he was a grandson of both a King of the Romans and a King of Bohemia.
Career
He passed his early days at the Bohemian court and the town of Brugg in the Swabian home territory of the Habsburgs, where he is mentioned as titular duke in a 1294 deceased The next day King Albert on his way home became separated from his attendants when crossing the Reuss River near Windisch, and was at once attacked by John and his conspirators. He escaped the vengeance of Albert"s sons, and from that point his fate remained unknown.
In the same year the prince-electors chose the Luxembourg count Henry VII as Albert"s successor, who placed John under the imperial ban (Reichsacht).
John allegedly fled to Italy and found refuge in a Pisa monastery, where in 1313 he is said to have been visited by Emperor Henry VII. After the defeat of Albert"s son Frederick the Fair at the 1322 Battle of Mühldorf, the Habsburg dynasty was not able to regain the Imperial crown until the election of King Albert II of Germany in 1438. Tell rejects the comparison but directs him to Italy, advising him to seek papal absolution.
John"s fate was further perpetuated in the poem Der Graf von Thal (1838) by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and by the Austrian writer Johann Nepomuk Vogl, whose ballad Der Mönch zu Pisa was set to music by Carl Loewe (Op 114) in 1846. Historical dramas were written by August Gottlieb Meißner (Johann von Schwaben, 1770) and Julius Grosse (Johann von Schwaben, 1870).