Pere III of Aragon (1239-11 November 1285) was the king of Aragon from 27 July 1276 to 11 November 1285 (succeeding Jaume I of Aragon and preceding Alfonso III of Aragon) and King of Sicily from 4 September 1282 to 11 November 1285 (succeeding Charles of Naples and preceding James I).
Biography[]
Pere was born in 1239, the eldest son of Jaume I of Aragon and Violant of Hungary. Pere was born to the Catholic Catalan House of Barcelona, the ruling dynasty of the Kingdom of Aragon. On 13 June 1262, Pere married Constance of Sicily, the heiress of Manfred of Sicily, giving him control of the island of Sicily. Pere assumed the monarchy of Aragon on 27 July 1276, and he pacified Valencia and defeated other rebellions in his realm. In 1281, he led 140 ships and 15,000 troops to conquer Tunis, but on 30 March 1282 a Sicilian embassy asked him to take the throne of Sicily from Charles of Anjou. This began the War of the Sicilian Vespers, and Pere used Roger de Lauria as an admiral. He won the Battle of Malta against the Angevins on 8 July 1283, the Battle of the Gulf of Naples on 5 June 1284, and the Battle of Les Formigues on 4 September 1284. Pere's forces fought against the Guelph Angevins, who were connected to the Kingdom of France. In 1284 Pope Martin IV, to whom the Angevins had pledged their loyalty, called for the Aragonese Crusade, in which King Philip III of France and King James II of Majorca led armies against the Aragonese. Their navies were defeated multiple times, and the crusade failed by 1285. Both Philip III and Pere III died in 1284, and the Aragonese would eventually rule over Sicily as the Kingdom of Trinacria while the Angevins ruled the Kingdom of Naples.