As he belonged to the House of Luxembourg , he was also Duke of Luxembourg from to Sebaldus Church. His father had the two-year-old crowned King of Bohemia in June [ 2 ] and in also obtained for him the Electoral Margraviate of Brandenburg. When on 10 June Charles IV asserted Wenceslaus' election as King of the Romans [ 2 ] by the prince-electors , two of seven votes, those of Brandenburg and Bohemia , were held by the emperor and his son themselves.
Wenceslaus was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle on 6 July. In order to secure the election of his son, Charles IV revoked the privileges of many Imperial Cities that he had earlier granted and mortgaged them to various nobles. The cities, however, were not powerless, and as executors of the public peace, they had developed into a potent military force.
Moreover, as Charles IV had organized the cities into leagues, he had made it possible for them to cooperate in large-scale endeavors. The city league soon attracted other members and until acted as an autonomous state within the Empire. Wenceslaus took some part in government during his father's lifetime, [ 2 ] and on Charles' death in , he inherited the Crown of Bohemia and as king assumed the government of the Holy Roman Empire.
In the cathedral of Monza there is preserved a series of reliefs depicting the coronations of the kings of Italy with the Iron Crown of Lombardy. The seventh of these depicts Wenceslaus being crowned in the presence of six electors, he himself being the seventh. The depiction is probably not accurate and was likely made solely to reinforce the claims of the cathedral on the custody of the Iron Crown. The cities were taken severally and devastated. Most of them quietly acquiesced when King Wenceslaus proclaimed an ambivalent arrangement at Cheb Eger in that prohibited all leagues between cities while confirming their political autonomy.
This settlement provided a modicum of stability for the next several decades, however, the cities dropped out as a basis of the central Imperial authority. During his long reign, Wenceslaus held a tenuous grip on power at best, as he came into repeated conflicts with the Bohemian nobility led by the House of Rosenberg. On two occasions he was even imprisoned for lengthy spells by rebellious nobles. But the greatest liability for Wenceslaus proved to be his own family.
