In 1382, the Kingdom of Naples was inherited by Charles of Durazzo, King of Hungary, great grandson of King Charles II of Naples. After this, the House of Anjou of Naples was renamed House of Anjou-Durazzo, when Charles married his first cousin Margaret of Durazzo, member of a prominent Neapolitan noble family.
• Grandson of Charles II; member of the House of Anjou-Taranto
• Potential claimant to the throne through the male line if Joanna died childless, but he and his line also died out.
After Joanna's death without legitimate issue, the heirs were her nieces, only one (Margaret) of whom left issue (with Charles, a member of the Durazzo branch of the House of Anjou). The next ones in line were the Durazzo branch itself (the Taranto branch, of which Louis I was part, had been extinguished), whose prominent figure, Charles, was Joanna's enemy.
Joanna of Naples had refused to name her enemy Charles of Durazzo as heir to the Neapolitan throne despite him ending up succeeding her anyway. If Charles' line was ignored, the subsequent heirs would be the descendants of Margaret, Countess of Anjou, a daughter of Charles II of Naples; the line pointed to the kings of France of the House of Valois. Joanna chose this line, though she named as heir, her second cousin once removed, Louis of Valois-Anjou, the second son of King John II of France, in order to avoid a personal union with France.
As Charles III had already seized the Neapolitan throne, initially the House of Valois-Anjou only had an empty claim. One of their members, Louis II, succeeded in ruling Naples for a time.
Time as claimant instead of actual rule will be shown in italic.
Joanna II recognised Louis III of Anjou as heir in 1423, however he died in 1434 before succeeding to the throne. His brother René of Anjou succeeded to the claim and became king upon Joanna's death in 1435.
Before Louis of Anjou, Queen Joanna II's adopted heir had been Alfonso V of Aragon. His father, Ferdinand I of Aragon had inherited both Aragon & Sicily from his maternal uncle Martin I of Aragon. Martin, in turn had claimed the throne of Sicily following the extinction of the Sicillian branch of the House of Barcelona, thereby bringing Sicily under the Aragonese crown. Alfonso refused to be disinherited and conquered Naples from René of Anjou in 1442. Although both Sicily & Naples were once again under the rule of the single monarch since the Sicillian Vespers, Alfonso passed the Aragonese throne (including Sicily) to his brother John, while Naples went to his illegitimate son Ferdinand.
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Name
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Relationship with Predecessor(s)
Title
Alfonso I, the Magnanimous (Alfonso I, il Magnanimo)
2 June 1442
27 June 1458
• Adopted son of Joanna II; conquered
King of Aragon, Sicily and Naples (Re di Aragona, Sicilia e Napoli)
Charles VIII was succeeded by his 2nd cousin once removed Louis XII. Louis had no claim to the Neapolitan throne, but as successor to Charles VIII in France he nevertheless wanted to succeed him in Naples as well.
Ferdinand II of Aragon conquered Naples from the French in the Treaty of Granada. Naples, alongside Sicily entered in a personal union with the Kingdom of Aragon, which lasted for over 2 centuries. Over time, the Crown of Aragon and the Crown of Castile merged to form the Monarchy of Spain, known colloquially as the "Kingdom of Spain", though the constituent crowns (Castile, Aragon, Sicily, Naples) retained their own institutions, and were ruled officially as separate states in personal union rather than as a unified state. The local government was ruled by a Spanishviceroy. The royal houses were:
After Championnet's deposition, MacDonald ruled Naples for some months, before moving his forces in Northern Italy. Naples was then reconquered by the Bourbons' loyalists.
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