King Robert of Naples was a grandson of Charles, Count of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, and, true to the tradition of his house, stood as the champion of the Popes against imperial claims over Italy. Outwardly he was by far the most powerful of the Italian princes of his day; but in reality he sat uneasily on his throne. The Neapolitans had not learned with time to love their Angevin rulers, but even after the death of Conradin remembered the Hohenstaufen, and envied Sicily that dared to throw off the French yoke and give herself to a Spanish dynasty. It is difficult to provide a short and at the same time connected account of the history of Naples from the death of King Robert in 1343 until 1435, when it was conquered by the House of Aragon. For nearly a century there is a dismal record of murders and plots, with scarcely an illuminating glimpse of patriotism or of any heroic figure. It is like a ‘dance of death’, with ever-changing partners, and nothing achieved save crimes and revolutions. King Robert’s successor was a granddaughter, Joanna I, a political personage from her cradle, and married at the age of five to a boy cousin two years her senior, Andrew of Hungary, brother of Louis the Great. We cannot tell if, left to themselves, this young couple, each partner so passionate and self-willed, could have learned to work together in double harness. What is certain is that no one in that corrupt court gave them the chance, one party of intriguers continually whispering in Joanna’s ear that as queen it was beneath her dignity to accept any interference from her husband, while their rivals reminded the young Prince Andrew that he was descended from King Robert’s elder brother, and therefore had as great a right to the throne as his wife. Frequent quarrels as to whose will should prevail shook the council-chamber, and then at last came tragedy. In 1345 Joanna and Andrew, then respectively eighteen and twenty, set out together into the country on an apparently amicable hunting-expedition. As they slept one night in the guest-room of a convent the Prince heard himself called by voices in the next room. Suspecting no harm he rose and went to see which of his friends had summoned him, only to find himself attacked by a group of armed men. He turned to re-enter the bedroom, but the door was locked behind him. With the odds now wholly against him, Andrew fought bravely for his life, but at length two of his assassins succeeded in throwing a rope round his neck, and with this they strangled him and hung his body from the balcony outside.