Story Highlights
- Historical event:
- 25 June 1373
- It was turbulent period in the Kingdom of Naples during Joanna’s reign. She married twice and had a string of lovers. She had to fight off numerous foreign rulers who wanted to take, or at least inherit, her kingdom.
On this day Joanna II, Queen of Naples from the famous dynasty of Anjou, was born in present-day Zadar in Croatia.
She was the sister of the famous king Ladislaus of Naples, who was known for selling Dalmatia to Venice for 100,000 ducats.
Joanna succeeded her brother after his death and became the Queen of Naples, but also a pretender to the Hungarian and Croatian thrones. In fact, Joanna inherited the Angevin claim to the thrones of Jerusalem and Sicily.
However, in reality, she ruled only over the Kingdom of Naples (Sigismund of Luxembourg reigned in Hungary and Croatia, the Aragons ruled in Sicily, and Jerusalem had long since been under Muslim rule).
It was turbulent in the Kingdom of Naples during Joanna’s reign. She married twice and had a string of lovers. She had to fight off numerous foreign rulers who wanted to take, or at least inherit, her kingdom.
She was also in conflict with the pope (Neapolitan rulers played a major role in relations with the papacy in the Middle Ages, because they represented the strongest secular force near Rome).
Queen Joanna had no children, so the entire dynasty of Anjou died out with her. It was the end of the dynasty that once ruled on an incredibly wide area.
Specifically, the medieval House of Anjou produced kings of Hungary, Croatia, Dalmatia, Slavonia, Naples, Sicily, Poland ,and Albania, titular emperors of Constantinople, despots of Epirus, and counts of Provence and Anjou, and even titular kings of Jerusalem.
