each actor in the historic drama so difficult to fix without having a genealogical table before the eye, that I have appended one, omitting all such entries as do not specially concern the story. I may merely add that Joanna's second husband was her cousin, descended from Philip of Tarentum, brother of her grandfather, Robert of the Sicilies. Also, that the county of Provence descended to Joanna I. and Joanna II., through their common ancestor, Charles II. of Anjou, son of Charles I. and Beatrix, the heiress of that county. About her I shall have something to say later on.
Joanna II. was not much better as a woman than Joanna I. She was enamoured of her handsome seneschal, Gian Caracciolo, who did not respond to her advances. One day she inquired of her courtiers what animal each mainly disliked. One said a toad, another a spider: Caracciolo declared his utter loathing for a rat.
Next day, when he was on his way to his room, he met a servant of the Queen with a cage full of rats. As he was attempting to pass by, the domestic opened the cage door, and out rushed the rats. Caracciolo fled, and, trying every door in the passage, found all locked save one, that into the Queen's apartment. She created him Duke of Avellino and Lord of Capua. One day, in 1432, relying on the favour he enjoyed, he asked to be created Prince of Capua. When she refused, he boxed her ears. This was an outrage she could not forgive, and by her orders he was assassinated in his room.[1]
The Queen died two years later.
- ↑ His tomb and statue, a life-like portrait, by Ciaccione, is in the church of S. Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples.
