Eleanor of Anjou, Queen of Sicily

Who was Eleanor of Anjou, Queen of Sicily?

Eleanor of Naples was the Queen consort of Frederick III of Sicily. She was a member of the Capetian House of Anjou by birth.

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

Eleanor was firstly married in 1299 to Philip de Toucy, son of Narjot de Toucy and Lucia of Tripoli. Their marriage was dissolved on 17 January 1300 because they were related and had not sought permission from the pope to marry.

On 17 May 1302, Eleanor married secondly to 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.

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.