Count Ugolino
Count Ugolino was a real person who died around thirty years before The Inferno was written. Count Ugolino was imprisoned in a tower with his two sons and his two grandchildren after some incidents resulted in his falling out of favor with the people of Pisa. One of the people of Pisa's main problems with Count Ugolino was that he had allegedly poisoned another Count of whom he was jealous, as he felt that that Count had earned more respect than him from the people in Pisa in regards to having gracious manners. Before Count Ugolino was banished to the tower, his illegitimate son, as well as well as one of his grandsons, were killed as Ugolino was being captured.While locked in the tower, Count Ugolino begged for repentance from the lord, and requested that he talk to someone of religious authority, but his pleas were of no avail. Following the incident, the tower where they were trapped began to be reffed to as the “tower of famine.”
Source:http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Divine-Comedy-of-Dante--Hell4.html
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