They Will Laugh (My Son)
Sviatoslav refuses baptism because his retinue would laugh; Olha brings a Latin bishop, Adalbert, from Otto I and he is driven out; in 968 the Pechenegs besiege Kyiv with Olha and her three grandsons inside while her son is on the Danube; when he returns and wants to leave again she tells him to bury her first. Fact: Olha's embassy to Otto I in 959 and Adalbert's failed mission (961 to 962) are in seven Latin sources; Sviatoslav stayed pagan and campaigned on the Danube; the Pecheneg siege of 968 is in the Chronicle. Legend or dramatisation: the 'my retinue will laugh' exchange, the boy swimming the Dnipro for his horse and Olha's dying words are the Chronicle's; 'nineteen years' points to Volodymyr's baptism of Rus' in 988.
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