Constance of Aragon

Constance was the wife of Frederick at the time of my story, The Falconer. Naturally I wanted to know more about her beyond mere birth and death dates. What I found is worth relating in its own right.

Constance was born the daughter of Alfonso II, the king of Aragon, and Sancha of Castile and Leon. So she had royal blood on both sides of her family. She was born the second of nine children. We know almost nothing of her chidlhood, which surely came to an end in 1196 when her father died. She was sixteen.

Her older brother, Peter became the second Aragonese king by that name, and he soon set about arranging a marriage for his sister. Nothing would do but marriage into another royal family. In this case, it was to Emeric (Imre) the king of Hungary. So, in 1198 at the age of nineteen, Constance became the Queen of Hungary.

It had to have been difficult. Hungary was an entirely different culture from Aragon, and Hungarian is a very different language from Aragonese. The young queen could not have brought with her more than a few ladies-in-waiting to give her some sense of home.

Her time in Hungary was marked by difficulty and tragedy. Her husband and her husband’s brother fought almost continuously, and there were times when it was feared the king would lose that struggle. In the midst of this, Constance bore Imre a son, whom they named Ladislaus (Louis), in the year 1200.

The struggle with Imre’s brother Andrew continued back and forth. In 1204, Imre fell mortally ill, dying in November of that year. Constance was now a widow of twenty-four with a young child to care for and a kingdom that now fell to that same rival brother, Andrew.

From the outset, Constance found herself shunted aside and isolated. Far from helping to rule her husband’s realm, she found herself little more than a prisoner. The situation was so bad, Constance took her boy in hand and fled in disguise, reaching Vienna in the dead of winter. There she was protected by Duke Leopold VI of Austria.

Constance was still queen mother, for Imre in his final months had had young Louis crowned co-emperor. She might have formed a sort of court-in-exile, or at least been able to negotiate better terms for herself and her son. This can only be speculation, however, for Louis died a few short months after arriving in Vienna, on 7 May 1205.

Constance was now alone in a foreign land. Andrew, now legitimately king, demanded and got the body of his nephew, which he buried in his own castle. Leopold of Austria looked at his awkward guest and at his bellicose neighbor and made a political choice: he sent Constance back to Aragon.

You will remember that her father had died almost ten years previously. After his death, his wife had a monastery built, to which she retired for the remainder of her life. It was to this abbey of Our Lady at Sijena that Constance now also went. She lived there for three years and by all accounts was content. At the very least, the convent must have provided opportunity to grieve and heal.

But Constanza was still young and her big brother still had plans. We must first take a short detour to consider Frederick.

This young man (he was born in 1194) was the son of an emperor and a queen he was an orphan by the time he was three. His youth is a story in itself, but here we will note only that before his mother passed away, she asked the pope to be guardian to her son. That pope was Innocent III, one of the most important popes of the Middle Ages.

Innocent was now (1207-1208) considering marriage prospects for his ward, who at fourteen had officially become King of Sicily. Peter of Aragon was looking for papal support for a variety of reasons, and Innocent was looking for a suitable prospect for Frederick. And so a deal was struck. Innocent would annul Peter’s current marriage. In exchange, Constance would marry Frederick, and Peter would send 500 Catalan knights to Sicily to deal with rebellious barons (one of Innocent’s variety of reasons).

Constance’s Sicilian crown So, in 1208, Constance left the convent and sailed with her Catalan knights (commanded by one of her younger brothers) to Sicily. She was about twenty-five (her exact birthdate is a little uncertain). Her groom was barely fifteen. She had already been a queen, a wife, and a mother, and had lost a kingdom, a husband, and a son. She had been a refugee and had crossed the eastern Alps in winter, almost alone. Frederick, on the other hand, was ten years younger, had never been beyond Sicily, and had scarcely been outside of Palermo. It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely couple.

We know very little about these two as a couple, but what we do know points to them being content with one another. We hear that Frederick sought her advice at times. We know that of his three wives, only one is buried in the imperial tomb with him at Palermo: Constance of Aragon. We know further that when Frederick went north to claim the imperial throne, he made her regent in the name of their young son.

Constance did rule in Sicily for ten years, from 1212 to 1222. She dealt with rebels and threats of invasion. She managed to keep peace among the Muslim population at the western end of the island. She kept peace also with the Church, even though her husband repeatedly provoked papal anger, especially of Innocent III. She was eventually crowned Queen of Germany and Holy Roman Empress. She died of malaria in Catania (Sicily) on 23 June 1222.

When I learned all this, I knew I had to include Constance in any story about Frederick. You’ll have to wait for the book to see exactly how I did this. But there was no way I was going to write this remarkable woman out of Altearth.

One postscriptum: Important scenes in Frederick’s story take place in Switzerland, on Lake Constance. Frederick’s mother was named Constance. He himself was originally named Constantius. That was just way too many Constances. So I chose Costanza, instead. That’s actually Italian, which I excuse by pointing out she lived in Sicily. Close enough. Oh, the woes and tribulations of the historical writer.