The castle became well known in the 14th century because of the bold and dynamic Countess Loretta, Count Heinrich II’s young widow. Her great adversary was the eminent Archbishop and Elector of Trier Baldwin of Luxembourg, who would gladly have brought the bothersome “foreign body” within his Electorate that was the County of Sponheim under his sway. Countess Loretta, irreverently and boldly, had the great Baldwin taken prisoner in 1328 during a voyage on the Moselle and locked him up at her stronghold of Starkenburg in “honourable” detention. Neither the threats of Baldwin’s nephew the Emperor nor the Pope’s anathema could move the young and, it is said, attractive Countess to release the Archbishop. He was finally let go after having paid a high ransom and made sweeping political concessions, which itself led to further questions about his stay at Starkenburg. According to legend, the ransom was later used to build the Countess’s new dwelling – a “widow’s seat” – called Frauenburg () near Frauenberg ["sic"] on the river Nahe.