Eleanor of Anjou


Eleanor of Anjou was Queen of Sicily as the wife of King 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, son of Narjot de Toucy and Lucia of Tripoli. Their marriage was dissolved on 17 January 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII 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.
Eleanor and Frederick had nine children:
Eleanor died on the 9 August 1341 at the Monastery of San Nicolo di Arena, she had been a widow since 1337. She was buried at a Franciscan monastery in Catania.