The elder of the two daughters born to Charles, Duke of Calabria, and Marie of Valois—both of whom had predeceased their father and father-in-law, Robert, King of Naples—Joan was married, as a child of fourteen, to her cousin Andrew the grandson of King Charles of Hungary, the brother of King Robert; and on the death of the latter in the month of January 1343, succeeded him as his granddaughter on the throne of Naples. At that time Joan, although not yet fifteen years old, was beautiful with the beauty and grace of a grown woman; her eyes were of a shade of brown so deep as to be almost black; whilst the pallor of her complexion was enhanced by the lustrous dark hair of her, which she wore, according to the fashion of the day, in two long and heavy plaits that fell nearly to her knees. Moreover, her tall, slender figure added several years to her appearance, whilst the expression of her face, albeit sensitive and gentle, was one of determination and of a latent strength of purpose far beyond that of most girls of her age. For Joan of Anjou had already learned the meaning both of love and of hate—the hate of her husband, and the guilty love of another than he. The name of the man for whom she had, even then, betrayed her Hungarian husband was Robert of Cabano, the son of Filippa Cabano, and her husband Raymond, a Saracen, bought out of slavery by another Raymond Cabano who had given him his own name in baptism and had procured for him the post of head cook to Charles the Hammer, King of Naples and elder brother of King Robert, the grandfather and precursor of Queen Joan. From being head cook, Raymond had since risen to the most eminent post of Seneschal of the Kingdom of Naples. The way of Joan’s loveless marriage—the source of all her sins and misfortunes—to her cousin Andrew of Hungary was this: it had been arranged by her grandfather, King Robert, in the intention of making amends to Andrew for having usurped the sovereignty of Naples from Andrew’s father, Carobert of Hungary, the eldest son of King Robert’s brother, Charles the Hammer. With this object, King Robert had caused Andrew to be brought as a child to his Court at Naples, that the boy might become fitted by education and surroundings to be the husband of Joan, and share with her the crown of Naples and of Jerusalem. For, be it said, the Hungarian-born Andrew was by nature uncouth and savage and cold, and altogether unsuited, both in his temperament and his views of life, to fulfil King Robert’s expectations of him. Instead of growing more tender, more responsive and affectionate in the genial surroundings of the Neapolitan Court, as had been hoped might prove to be the case, he seemed, on the contrary, to become daily more reserved, more imbued with the sense of his own importance, more generally domineering and less sympathetic towards those about him.