Late September, 1515

The reign of Friedrich V von Hohenzollern had been a troubled one. As the years had worn on, the conditions in Ansbach had slowly declined. The behavior of the Margrave had left him diplomatically isolated, a man constantly irritated by the issues of the day. He famously proved himself as a untrustworthy ally when he handed over the battle plans and letters of the Ostdeutschliga to the Emperor's forces over a decade ago, leaving him without friends except for an ever distant Maximilian and his volatile family members to the west and north. With mounting debts and a grating family situation, he would soon find his reign cut short. Not by a literal blade or an act of God, but a metaphorical one.

It would be the sound of spears hitting the floor that would provide the signal. In the dead of night, as the Margrave was sleeping, the guards assigned to his room apprehended the Margrave, ripping him out of his sheets and a pleasant dream of wine and merriment. Leaving him no time to get dressed, they had put a sack over his head and bound his hands with rope. Thrown into a wagon, it seemed like they had rode all night, to where, only one could guess. In what had revealed to have been the morning, the sack was removed from his head, to reveal his two sons Kasimir and Albrecht awaiting him. A short exchange of words would follow, in which his sons would explain to him that he was being relieved of his duties as Margrave, the stress of which had surely caused him to deteriorate into the man he saw in the mirror. Friedrich's protests would once again be drowned out by the sack, and the group rode north, to the seat of Bayreuth, Kulmbach, and to the nearby castle and informal prison of the land, Plassenburg. In his stead, Kasimir and Albrecht would jointly rule the Margraviates, as their brother Georg was far to the East in Lithuania, abound in plots of his own.