Jacqueline Alio - Biographer of the Medieval Queens of Sicily. Meet the scholar who is writing the history of Sicily's women.
Description: Sicily's queens introduced by a Sicilian historian.
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The Story of Sicily's Greatest Medieval Queen, Margaret of Navarre, Regent from 1166 until 1171
For five eventful years Margaret – who died in 1183 – was the most powerful woman in Europe and the Mediterranean, governing a polyglot realm of some two million subjects living on Sicily and in peninsular Italy south of Rome in the regions of Campania, Basilicata, Puglia, Molise and Calabria. Born in La Guardia, in Navarre, in 1135, and raised in Pamplona, she wed William I of Sicily in 1149 and eventually succeeded him as regent for their young son, William II.
Her regency is full of details generally overlooked by past historians writing about the Kingdom of Sicily. For example, under Margaret's administration and protection was the largest population of Muslims living within the formal authority of a woman, a malikah who counted Arabs among her trusted courtiers.
Jacqueline Alio - Biographer of the Medieval Queens of Sicily. Meet the scholar who is writing the history of Sicily's women.