Early life Robert was born around 1276, the third son of the future Charles II of Naples (then heir apparent) and his wife Mary of Hungary. His father was the son of the incumbent King of Naples,
Charles of Anjou, who had established an Italian realm a decade earlier in 1266. In 1282, the Angevin kingdom was shaken by the
Sicilian Vespers, a revolt by the Sicilians against the rule of his grandfather Charles. The ensuing
War of the Sicilian Vespers against the Sicilian rebels widened when the crown of
Crown of Aragon intervened in support of the Sicilians. The Sicilian conflict had a major effect on Robert's early life; in 1284, his father was captured
in battle and became a prisoner of the Aragonese, and in 1285 Robert's grandfather died at
Foggia while on campaign. When his imprisoned father assumed the throne of Naples in 1285, a period of stalemate in the war led to his father negotiating for his freedom from Aragonese captivity. While Robert was sent to the Aragonese court as a political hostage, Charles II's eldest son,
Charles Martel of Anjou was named as heir to the throne of Naples; he would die of the plague in 1295. His surviving son,
Charles of Hungary, would be passed over for succession of Naples. Instead, Robert would become heir apparent, after his elder brother
Louis of Anjou (later Saint Louis of Toulouse) renounced his inheritance to take up holy orders. That same year, Naples and Aragon signed the
Treaty of Anagni, in which
James II of Aragon pledged to return the throne of Sicily to Charles II. As part of the treaty, Robert married James' daughter,
Yolanda of Aragon, thereby tying the two former combatants together by marriage. The treaty, however, did not end the conflict; the Sicilian parliament refused to allow the House of Anjou to regain control of the island, and so elected James' brother,
Frederick II, as king of Sicily. Faced with stiff Sicilian resistance, in 1298 Robert and his new father-in-law James launched a
major invasion of Sicily, in which Robert led the Angevin forces. After some initial successes, the invasion became bogged down in Sicily, and in 1299 his younger brother,
Philip of Taranto, was captured by the Sicilians. The war ended in 1302 with the signing of the
Peace of Caltabellotta; Robert and the
Angevin dynasty lost Sicily forever, their rule limited to the south of peninsular Italy.
King of Naples Charles II of Naples died in 1309, leaving Robert to inherit the throne of Naples. In addition to inheriting the throne, Robert - as the new Angevin king of Naples - was seen as the papal champion in Italy, as had been his father and grandfather; his reign being blessed from the papal enclave within Robert's Provence, by the French
Pope Clement V, who made him papal vicar in
Romagna and
Tuscany, where Robert intervened in the war of factions in
Florence, accepted the offered signiory of that city, but had to abandon it due to Clement's opposition. The leader of the
Guelph party in Italy, Robert opposed the sojourn of
Emperor Henry VII in Italy (1311–13) and his occupation of
Rome in 1312. After Henry's death, the Guelph reaction against the
Ghibelline leaders in northern Italy,
Matteo Visconti and
Cangrande della Scala, made it seem for a time that Robert would become the arbiter of Italy. Already ruler of wide possessions in
Piedmont, Robert's prestige increased further when in 1313 the pope named him
Senator of Rome, and when he became Lord of
Genoa (1318–34) and
Brescia (1319) and from 1314 onwards held the resounding papal title of imperial vicar of all Italy, during the absence in Italy of the Holy Roman Emperor,
vacante imperio. In 1328 he fought another emperor who had ventured into Italy,
Louis IV of Bavaria, and in 1330 forced
John of Bohemia to quit northern Italy. Robert's hegemony in Italy was diminished only by the constant menace of the House of Barcelona, which controlled both Sicily and Aragon. of Robert I of Anjou King of Naples, 1309-1343. When the succession to the
margraviate of Saluzzo was disputed between
Manfred V and his nephew
Thomas II in 1336, Robert intervened on behalf of Manfred, for Thomas had married into the
Ghibelline Visconti family. Robert advanced on
Saluzzo and besieged it. He succeeded in taking it and sacking it, setting the city on fire and imprisoning Thomas, who had to pay a ransom. The whole dramatic incident is recorded by
Silvio Pellico. However, when his viceroy
Reforza d'Angoult was defeated in the
Battle of Gamenario (22 April 1345), Angevin power in Piedmont began to crumble. With his second wife
Sancha of Majorca, Robert established the
kingdom of Naples as a center of early Renaissance culture and of religious dissent, supporting the
Joachimite prophesies of the
Spiritual Franciscans. At Robert's death in 1343, he was succeeded by his 16-year-old granddaughter,
Joanna I of Naples, his son
Charles having predeceased him in 1328. Joanna was already betrothed to her cousin, the 15-year-old
Andrew of Hungary, son of the Angevin king of Hungary, Charles Robert. In his last will and testament Robert explicitly excluded the claims of Andrew of Hungary, clearly mandated that he become
prince of Salerno and specified that Joanna alone assume the crown in her own right, to be succeeded by her legitimate offspring. If she were to die without heir, her younger sister
Maria, newly named the duchess of Calabria, and her legitimate offspring would inherit the throne. There is no mention in the will that Andrew be crowned king; and this historiographical tradition is largely the result of later historians' accepting without examination the assertions of Hungarian royal propaganda following Andrew's murder at
Aversa in 1345. This propaganda, the Hungarian assault on Joanna following the murder of Andrew, and the invasion of the Regno by
Louis I of Hungary eventually led to the end of
Anjou-Naples rule in Naples. ==Legacy==