Joan had only one sister, Mary, a mere child, who was scarcely thirteen years old when Joan came to the throne; this Princess Mary, by the terms of King Robert’s testament, was to inherit the throne in the event of her elder sister’s dying without issue; in addition, the old king had expressed a wish that Princess Mary should be affianced either to Louis, King of Hungary, elder brother of Andrew, or, failing Louis, to the Duke of Normandy, eldest son of the King of France. In case of the death without heirs of both Joan and Mary, the sovereignty would by rights fall to Charles of Durazzo, eldest son of King Robert’s younger brother who had died some years previously, John, Duke of Durazzo and Albania. John of Durazzo had left behind him a widow, Agnes, and two younger sons besides Charles; these were Ludovico, Count of Gravina, and Robert, Prince of the Morea. The youngest brother of King Robert, Philip, Prince of Taranto, who had likewise predeceased him, had also left a widow who bore the title of Empress of Constantinople inherited from her grandfather, Baldwin II, and three sons, Robert, Philip, and finally, Louis of Taranto, the handsomest and most accomplished knight of his day, then but barely turned three-and-twenty. There had survived King Robert, too, his widow, Sancia of Aragon, a character as noble and holy as the majority of those composing the Neapolitan Court were debased and self-seeking and unscrupulous. Before departing this life, King Robert had obtained from Queen Sancia a promise to the effect that she would remain in the world and at Court for a whole year in order to watch over the young King and Queen, Andrew and Joan—it being Queen Sancia’s announced intention to enter as soon as possible into a convent, there to end her days in peace and prayer—and to protect their relationship to one another from the perils which, as the dying man had clearly foreseen, must inevitably menace it. And, very particularly, he had warned his widow to be on her guard, where Joan was concerned, against three especial dangers—the love of Bertrand of Artois, the beauty of Louis of Taranto, and the ambition of Charles of Durazzo. So that, no sooner was King Robert dead, than his wishes in respect to the mutual sovereignty of Andrew and Joan were contemptuously put aside by those who proclaimed Joan, and Joan alone, as their new Queen to the Neapolitan people; but Joan’s acquiescence in their proclamation of her as sole sovereign cannot be overlooked, foreshadowing, as it would almost seem to do, some already half-formed instinctive project of becoming actually that which she had been proclaimed to be—the single occupant of the throne.