Eleanor of Anjou

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Eleanor of Anjou (August, 1289 - 9 August 1341) was the Queen consort of Frederick III of Sicily.

Family

She was the third daughter of Charles II of Naples and Maria Arpad of Hungary.

Her paternal grandparents were Charles I of Sicily and Beatrice of Provence. Her maternal grandparents were Stephen V of Hungary (d. 1272) and his wife, queen Elisabeth, who was daughter of Zayhan of Kuni, a chief of the Cuman tribe and had been a pagan before her marriage.

[edit]Marriage

On 17 May 1302, Eleanor married Frederick III of Sicily. Her father and her new husband had been engaged in a war for ascendancy in the Mediterranean Sea and especially Sicily and the Mezzogiorno. The marriage was part of a diplomatic effort to establish peaceful relations which would lead to the Peace of Caltabellotta (19 August, 1302).

The peace divided the old Kingdom of Sicily into an island portion and a peninsular portion. The island, called the Kingdom of Trinacria, went to Frederick, who had been ruling it, and the Mezzogiorno, called the Kingdom of Sicily contemporaneously, but called the Kingdom of Naples by modern scholarship, went to Charles II, who had been ruling it. Thus, the peace was formal recognition of an uneasy status quo.

Eleanor and Frederich had nine children:

Peter II of Sicily (1304 – 1342), successor

Roger (born 1305), died young

Manfred, Duke of Athens and Neopatria (1306 – 1317), Duke of Athens and Neopatria

Constance, married on December 29, 1331 to Leo IV of Armenia

Elisabeth,(1310 – 1349), married (1328) Stephen II of Bavaria

William, Prince of Taranto (1312 – 1338), Prince of Taranto, Duke of Athens and Neopatria

Giovanni di Randazzo (1317 – 1348), Duke of Randazzo, Duke of Athens and Neopatria, Regent of Sicily (from 1338)

Catherine (1320 – 1342)

Margaret (1331 – 1360), married (1348) Rudolf II of the Palatainate