Robert of Naples

Robert of Anjou, the Wise (1276–1343), third son of Charles II of Naples, was the central figure of Italian politics. The War of the Sicilian Vespers shaped his youth: after his father's capture he went to Aragon as a hostage, and in 1298 he led the Angevin invasion of Sicily. The war ended in 1302, and the island was lost to the dynasty.

His elder brothers died or renounced their claims, and he became King of Naples on his father's death in 1309. Leader of the Italian Guelphs, he opposed Emperor Henry VII in 1311–1313.

He preached sermons, and Dante dismissed him as a ‘re di sermone’, a king of words, yet he patronized Giotto and Petrarch, who asked Robert to examine him before his coronation in 1341. His son Charles of Calabria died in 1328, so in 1343 the crown passed to his granddaughter Joanna I.