Stephen the Posthumous

[...] On the death of King Andrew [II], the lady [Beatrice d'Este] wished to return to her family, and to an assembly of the great men of the Hungarian kingdom and the archbishops and bishops she showed the manifest signs that she was great with child; and so she returned to her own land of Este, and there in her father's house [sic] she gave birth to a male child, whom at his baptism they named Stephen.The elderly Andrew II, who had been widowed recently for the second time, married the 23-year-old Beatrice d'Este in Székesfehérvár on 14 May 1234, even though his sons – Béla and Coloman – were sharply opposed to his third marriage.

Béla and Coloman accused her of having, in King Andrew's life, an adulterous liaison with their father's influential lord Denis, son of Ampud.

Béla IV dismissed and punished many of his father's closest advisors, including Denis, who was blinded and imprisoned; he died in captivity.

Béla also ordered Beatrice's imprisonment, but she managed to escape to the Holy Roman Empire, where she gave birth to a posthumous son in the town of Wehrda, Duchy of Thuringia (present-day a borough of Marburg) in early 1236.

Here a certain Venetian [Michele Sbarra Morosini], one of the most powerful and wealthy citizens of the city, knowing of certain that he was the son of the king of Hungary, gave him his daughter [Tomasina] in marriage and made him partner in all his riches.

Pope Innocent continued to his financial support, according to a papal letter from 25 February 1250 after the aforementioned 35 monasteries were reluctant to pass on their revenues to Stephen following Beatrice's death.

[10] According to a 16th-century chronicle, Stephen became acquainted with the political and social conditions of his place of origin, when Franciscan friars from Hungary visited Azzo's court.

[11] The 15th-century Humanist historian Antonio Bonfini claimed that Stephen's features alluded to royal descent and were particularly reminiscent of his father Andrew II.

[12] Sometime around 1252, Stephen left Azzo's court and traveled to the Kingdom of Aragon, where his half-sister Violant was the queen consort, but died in the autumn of 1251.

According to the Illuminated Chronicle, Stephen was elected podestà by the citizens of Ravenna, during the internal war between the Traversari and the da Polenta families (the latter ultimately expelled their enemies from the city in 1275 during a revolt).

After the death of Azzo VII, Guelph leaders elected Obizzo II as the next lord (signore) of Ferrara in February 1264, Stephen lost his last faint chance of inheritance.

Stephen also mentioned his two natural sons without specifying their name and age, who he financially and hypothetically took care of from the incomes of Slavonia and Este, after his heir Andrew takes possession of these two estates.

[18] Historian Dániel Bácsatyai identified a certain Aimery or Emeric (Aimericus) as one of the illegitimate sons of Stephen, who began his journey from the court of James II of Aragon to Hungary in August 1291 in order to receive a share of the property of the acquired Slavonia in accordance with his father's above-mentioned last testament.

According to a complaint from 1301, "former" castellan Tralusius arbitrarily and unlawfully relocated the population of Kékes to Szentendre, causing a damage to the Diocese of Veszprém.