Early Family and Political Life
Born on an unrecorded date in the first half of 1326, Joanna was the eldest surviving child of Charles, Duke of Calabria (eldest son of King Robert of Naples), and Marie of Valois (a sister of King Philip VI of France). The Duke of Calabria died the same year his youngest daughter Maria was born, leaving behind a pregnant widow. His death made Joanna, his eldest child, first in line to the throne; she received homage as such on 4 November 1330. She was proclaimed Duchess of Calabria in 1333 and Princess of Salerno on 26 June 1344.
At the age of eight (1334), she was betrothed to her six-year-old second cousin Prince Andrew (Hungarian: Endre) of the Hungarian branch of the House of Anjou, the son of Charles I of Hungary and younger brother of Louis I. Through his father he had a claim to Naples, which could be argued to be superior to that of Robert and consequently also to that of Joanna.
When King Robert died in 1343, in his last will and testament, he formally bequeathed his kingdom to Joanna, and made no mention of Andrew, even as a consort, and tried to exclude him from rule. In the event of Joanna's death without children, the crown would fall to her younger sister Maria and not to him.
With the approval of Pope Clement VI, Joanna was crowned as sole monarch of Naples in August 1344. Fearing for his life, Andrew wrote to his mother Elizabeth that he would soon flee the kingdom. She intervened, and made a state visit; before she returned to Hungary, she bribed Pope Clement to revert his decision and permit the coronation of Andrew. She also gave a ring to Andrew, which was supposed to protect him from death by blade or poison, and returned with a false sense of security to Hungary.
Joanna lost an important ally when her stepgrandmother, Sancha of Majorca, withdrew into a monastery, but kept resisting more papal interference in the kingdom. Due to her letters to the pope, he agreed that though Andrew would be crowned, only her coronation would be 'Blessed by God'.
When Joanna fell ill in the summer of 1344, Andrew caused great controversy when he released the Pipini brothers. They had been locked up by Robert the Wise after having been convicted for murder, rape, pillage, treason and several other offenses. Their possessions had been given to other nobles, which now became increasingly hostile to Andrew.
Read more about this topic: Joanna I Of Naples
Famous quotes containing the words political life, early, family, political and/or life:
“The general review of the past tends to satisfy me with my political life. No man, I suppose, ever came up to his ideal. The first half [of] my political life was first to resist the increase of slavery and secondly to destroy it.... The second half of my political life has been to rebuild, and to get rid of the despotic and corrupting tendencies and the animosities of the war, and other legacies of slavery.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“If you are willing to inconvenience yourself in the name of discipline, the battle is half over. Leave Grandma’s early if the children are acting impossible. Depart the ballpark in the sixth inning if you’ve warned the kids and their behavior is still poor. If we do something like this once, our kids will remember it for a long time.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“It is in the love of one’s family only that heartfelt happiness is known.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“In Stalin each [Soviet bureaucrat] easily finds himself. But Stalin also finds in each one a small part of his own spirit. Stalin is the personification of the bureaucracy. That is the substance of his political personality.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“Innocence is lovely in the child, because in harmony with its nature; but our path in life is not backward but onward, and virtue can never be the offspring of mere innocence. If we are to progress in the knowledge of good, we must also progress in the knowledge of evil. Every experience of evil brings its own temptation and according to the degree in which the evil is recognized and the temptations resisted, will be the value of the character into which the individual will develop.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)