For five eventful years Margaret – who died in 1183 – was the most powerful woman in Europe and the Mediterranean, governing a polyglot realm of some two million subjects living on Sicily and in peninsular Italy south of Rome in the regions of Campania, Basilicata, Puglia, Molise and Calabria. Born in La Guardia, in Navarre, in 1135, and raised in Pamplona, she wed William I of Sicily in 1149 and eventually succeeded him as regent for their young son, William II. Continue reading
