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kingdom to Bordeaux, which, evading a suspected French ambush, he entered in
disguise. Needless to say, no combat ever took place and Peter returned to a very
troubled Spain.
While Peter was back in France and Spain, his admiral, Roger of Lauria, was
wreaking havoc in Italy. He routed Charles' fleets on the high seas several times
and conquered Malta for Aragon.
Peter was the direct descendant and the heir-general of the Mafalda, daughter of
Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia, the Norman conqueror, and his official wife
Sigelgaita, daughter of a Lombard prince, Guaimar IV of Salerno. Thus, he stood at
the end of the Hauteville succession to Sicily. After the ducal family of Apulia
became extinct with William II in 1127, Mafalda's heirs (then counts of Barcelona)
apparently became de jure heirs of Guiscard and Sigelgaita: thus Peter was
dormantly a claimant to the Norman succession of southern Italy. More directly, he
was the heir of Manfred in right of his wife. The Two Sicilies were to be a
tenaciously-pursued inheritance for the Aragonese Royal House and its heirs for
the next five centuries.
Peter (Pedro) III of Aragon
(Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Sicily after 1282. The red and gold strips
are the arms of the Crown of Aragon, and the eagles are the arms of the
House of Hohenstaufen).
Peter III of Aragon was born in Valencia, in 1240 and died in
Villafranca del Penedés, on November 2, 1285. He was called
"The big", being son of Jaime I the Conqueror and his second
wife Violante de Hungría. He was the successor of his father in
1276 in the king of Aragon, king of Valencia (like Peter I) and
count of Barcelone (like Pedro II).
He was married on June 13, 1262 in the cathedral of Montpellier with Constance of
Hohenstaufen, daughter and heiress of Manfredi I of Sicily; they were crowned in
Saragossa in a ceremony in which Pedro cancelled the vassalage that with the
papacy his grandfather Pedro II had coordinated.
All his reign was centered on the expansion of the Crown of Aragon for the
Mediterranean and for it he made use of his marriage with Constance to claim the
Sicilian crown. Sicily was from 1266 under the sovereignty of Carlos de Anjou who,
with the support of pope Clemente IV, who was not wishing any Hohenstaufen in
the south of Italy, had been invested king after defeating, in Benevento to Manfred,
who died in the battle.
The Hohenstaufen Dynasty - Page 158 of 200