The Story of Sicily's Greatest Medieval Queen, Margaret of Navarre, Regent from 1166 until 1171.

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.