THE KING FROM NAPLES: AN ERA OF PROGRESS

When Charles-Robert of Anjou (1310–42) was crowned in 1310, following the reigns of a Czech king, Vencel (Wenceslas) Premyslid, and of Otto Wittelsbach of Bavaria, he had already considered himself king for a number of years by virtue of his link with the dynasty of Árpád via his grandmother. The latter, an Árpád princess, had married Charles II of Anjou, king of Naples. The first Hungarian Angevin, Charles-Robert, who was also called Carobert, was brought up in Naples at the Angevin court, his family having been driven from Sicily and replaced in 1282 by the House of Aragon, following the tragic ‘Sicilian Vespers’ massacre. Charles-Robert had been destined for the throne of Hungary since birth. He was crowned for the first time in 1301, aged thirteen, but was not to enjoy undisputed kingship until after his third coronation in 1310.

The young Angevin, then twenty-two years old, found his new kingdom in a state of political turmoil. The international situation, on the other hand, favoured his ambitions. The Byzantine Empire – in the period leading up to its final fall in 1453 – remained preoccupied with the affairs of the capital, Constantinople. The Holy Roman Empire had been in decline since the death of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen in 1250. Hungary's immediate neighbour, Austria (the dukedom of the Babenbergs until its annexation by Bohemia), had passed into the hands of the Habsburgs in 1278. However, the slow expansion of this dynasty did not yet represent a threat to the more powerful Hungarian kingdom.