IN THE LATE SUMMER of 1282, while Charles of Anjou was conducting a constricting siege of Messina that would quite probably determine Sicily's fate, Peter of Aragon was struggling with a stubborn conundrum in Collo. He had positioned himself almost perfectly to intervene, but he could not do so unless he was invited. Otherwise he would be risking the appearance to the Sicilians and the rest of Europe of simply replacing one unwanted autocrat with another. Peter knew he was the solution to the Sicilian predicament; he just needed to convince the Sicilians of it.

Since arriving in Africa at the end of June, Peter had claimed a nearly deserted Collo and the adjacent coast, but he did not have the manpower to march on Constantina. He could only fortify his encampment and lead the occasional foray inland, while awaiting further developments on Sicily. In the meantime, incessant Saracen raids and the challenges of supplying and motivating a restive soldiery in an inimical environment proliferated. Eventually his counsellors, reportedly including Roger of Lauria, recommended that he dispatch an embassy to the pope, ostensibly to request ‘money and indulgences’ for the conquest of ‘Barbary’ for Christianity. But Michele Amari cites French sources to allege that this embassy, composed of Guillem de Castelnou and Pedro de Queralt, pulled into Palermo with their two galleys before ever reaching the papal palace at Montefiascone. Steven Runciman's reading of contemporary references led him to fundamentally concur, except that he believes that the Aragonese ambassadors met with the parliament of Palermo on the way back from Rome. No matter – the result was the same: Peter's request for papal support was rejected by Martin IV as he must have expected, but Castelnou's clandestine conference with the Sicilians in Palermo proved fruitful.

In truth, the Sicilians must have realized by this time that they had little choice in the matter – Anjou was literally at the gates of Messina with a huge army, even as the papacy adamantly refused its aegis. They soon dispatched a delegation to Collo that included two envoys from Palermo and three from Messina. They came in a pair of llenys sometime in mid-August.