The whole pedigree is such a tangle, and the place of each actor in
the historic drama so difficult to fix without having a genealogical
table before the eye, that I have appended one, omitting all such
entries as do not specially concern the story. I may merely add that
Joanna’s second husband was her cousin, descended from Philip of
Tarentum, brother of her grandfather, Robert of the Sicilies. Also,
that the county of Provence descended to Joanna I. and Joanna II.,
through their common ancestor, Charles II. of Anjou, son of Charles
I. and Beatrix, the heiress of that county. About her I shall have
something to say later on.
Joanna II. was not much better as a woman than Joanna I. She was
enamoured of her handsome seneschal, Gian Caracciolo, who did not
respond to her advances. One day she inquired of her courtiers what
animal each mainly disliked. One said a toad, another a spider:
Caracciolo declared his utter loathing for a rat.
Next day, when he was on his way to his room, he met a servant of the
Queen with a cage full of rats. As he was attempting to pass by, the
domestic opened the cage door, and out rushed the rats. Caracciolo
fled, and, trying every door in the passage, found all locked save one,
that into the Queen’s apartment. She created him Duke of Avellino and
Lord of Capua. One day, in 1432, relying on the favour he enjoyed, he
asked to be created Prince of Capua. When she refused, he boxed her
ears. This was an outrage she could not forgive, and by her orders he
was assassinated in his room.[11] The Queen died two years later.
“Jeanne II.,” says Alexis de Saint Priest, “fit assoir tous les vices
sur le trône des Angevins sans la compensation d’aucun talent, ni
d’aucune vertu.” Joanna I. had some cleverness, and in that, and in
that alone, was superior to the second Joanna.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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