The Principality of Taranto was a state in southern Italy created in 1088 for Bohemond I, eldest son of Robert Guiscard, as part of the peace between him and his younger brother Roger Borsa after a dispute over the succession to the Duchy of Apulia.
Taranto became the capital of the principality, which covered almost all of the heel of Apulia. During its subsequent 377 years of history, it was sometimes a powerful and almost independent feudal fief of the Kingdom of Sicily (and later of Naples), sometimes only a title, often given to the heir to the crown or to the husband of a reigning queen. When the House of Anjou was divided, Taranto fell to the house of Durazzo (1394–1463).
Ferdinand I of Naples united the Principality of Taranto to the Kingdom of Naples at the death of his wife, Isabella of Clermont. The principality came to an end, but the kings of Naples continued giving the title of Prince of Taranto to their sons, firstly to the future Alfonso II of Naples, eldest son of Isabella.
1200 - Guy Walter III of Brienne, husband of (Albinia, Elvira) Mary of Lecce of Altavilla, daughter of King Tancred of Sicily (Tancred of Hauteville, Count of Lecce). Title confiscated at the death of Walter;
Bohemond II was Prince of Taranto from 1111 to 1128 and Prince of Antioch from 1111/1119 to 1130. He was the son of Bohemond I, who in 1108 was forced to submit to the authority of the Byzantine Empire in the Treaty of Devol. Three years later, the infant Bohemond inherited the Principality of Taranto under the guardianship of his mother, Constance of France. The Principality of Antioch was administered by his father's nephew, Tancred, until 1111. Tancred's cousin, Roger of Salerno, managed the principality from 1111 to 1119. After Roger died in the Battle of the Field of Blood, Baldwin II of Jerusalem took over the administration of Antioch. However, he did acknowledge Bohemond's right to personally rule the principality upon reaching the age of majority.
Robert "Guiscard" de Hauteville, sometimes Robert "the Guiscard", also nicknamed “Terror Mundi”, was a Norman adventurer remembered for his conquest of southern Italy and Sicily in the 11th century.
Tancred was King of Sicily from 1189 to 1194. He was born in Lecce an illegitimate son of Roger III, Duke of Apulia by his mistress Emma, a daughter of Achard II, Count of Lecce. He inherited the title "Count of Lecce" from his grandfather and is consequently often referred to as Tancred of Lecce. Due to his short stature and unhandsome visage, he was mocked by his critics as "The Monkey King".
Ladislaus the Magnanimous was King of Naples from 1386 until his death and an unsuccessful claimant to the kingdoms of Hungary and Croatia. Ladislaus was a skilled political and military leader, protector and controller of Pope Innocent VII; however, he earned a bad reputation concerning his personal life. He profited from disorder throughout Italy to greatly expand his kingdom and his power, appropriating much of the Papal States to his own use. He was the last male of the Capetian House of Anjou.
Isabella of Clermont, also known as Isabella of Taranto, was queen of Naples as the first wife of King Ferdinand I of Naples, and a feudatory of the kingdom as the holder and ruling Princess of the Principality of Taranto in 1463–1465.
Giovanni Antonio (Giannantonio) Orsini del Balzo was a southern Italian nobleman and military leader; he was Prince of Taranto, Duke of Bari, Count of Lecce, Acerra, Soleto and Conversano, as well as Count of Matera (1433–63) and of Ugento (1453–63).
Mary of Enghien, also known as Maria d'Enghien, was Countess of Lecce from 1384 to 1446 and Queen of Naples and titular Queen of Sicily, Jerusalem and Hungary from 1406 to 1414 by marriage to Ladislaus of Naples.
Isabella of Brienne (1306–1360) was suo jure Countess of Lecce and Conversano, claimant to the Duchy of Athens and Kingdom of Jerusalem, etc.
Hugh, Count of Brienne and Lecce was the second surviving son of Count Walter IV of Brienne and Marie de Lusignan of Cyprus.
Louis of Enghien titular Duke of Athens, Count of Brienne and Lord of Enghien in 1381–1394, Count of Conversano in 1356–1394.
Raimondo Orsini del Balzo was a nobleman from the Kingdom of Naples. He was Count of Soleto (1382), Prince of Taranto (1399–1406), Duke of Bari, Grand Constable of the Kingdom of Naples, Gonfalonier of the Holy Roman Church. He was a member of the influential Orsini family of Rome. Although he is considered one of the most important people in the history of southern Italy, relatively little is known about his life.
Bartholomew "Tristan" de Clermont-Lodève, Count of Copertino, was a French-born knight who married Catherine Orsini del Balzo, youngest daughter of Mary of Enghien and Raimondo Orsini del Balzo, Prince of Taranto. He was the father of Isabella of Clermont, Princess of Taranto, the first consort of King Ferdinand I of Naples.
Walter III of Brienne was a nobleman from northern France. Becoming Count of Brienne in 1191, Walter married the Sicilian princess Elvira and took an army to southern Italy to claim her inheritance. He became Prince of Taranto in her right in 1201 but died fighting before he could establish himself as King of Sicily.
The House of Hauteville was a Norman family originally of seigneurial rank from the Cotentin. The Hautevilles rose to prominence through their part in the Norman conquest of southern Italy. By 1130, one of their members, Roger II, was made the first King of Sicily. His male-line descendants ruled Sicily until 1194. Some Italian Hautevilles took part in the First Crusade and the founding of the Principality of Antioch (1098).
Copertino, also known in English as Cupertino, is a town and comune in the province of Lecce in the Apulia region of south-east Italy.
The Italo-Normans, or Siculo-Normans (Siculo-Normanni) when referring to Sicily and Southern Italy, are the Italian-born descendants of the first Norman conquerors to travel to southern Italy in the first half of the eleventh century. While maintaining much of their distinctly Norman piety and customs of war, they were shaped by the diversity of southern Italy, by the cultures and customs of the Greeks, Lombards, and Arabs in Sicily.
The Capetian House of Anjou, or House of Anjou-Sicily, was a royal house and cadet branch of the direct French House of Capet, part of the Capetian dynasty. It is one of three separate royal houses referred to as Angevin, meaning "from Anjou" in France. Founded by Charles I of Anjou, the youngest son of Louis VIII of France, the Capetian king first ruled the Kingdom of Sicily during the 13th century. The War of the Sicilian Vespers later forced him out of the island of Sicily, which left him with the southern half of the Italian Peninsula, the Kingdom of Naples. The house and its various branches would go on to influence much of the history of Southern and Central Europe during the Middle Ages until it became extinct in 1435.
The County of Lecce was a semi-independent Italo-Norman entity in Apulia, in south-eastern Italy, which existed from 1055 until 1463. Its capital was at the city of Lecce, and it was bounded by the territories of Brindisi to the north, Oria and Nardò to the west, and Soleto and Otranto to the south.
The County of Apulia and Calabria, later the Duchy of Apulia and Calabria, was a Norman state founded by William of Hauteville in 1042 in the territories of Gargano, Capitanata, Apulia, Vulture, and most of Campania. It became a duchy when Robert Guiscard was raised to the rank of duke by Pope Nicholas II in 1059.
Bertrand III of Baux, Count of Andria, Montescaglioso, and Squillace, Lord of Berre, Senator of Rome, Captain-General of Tuscany, and Justiciar of Naples, was born in August 1295 at Andria, Italy to Bertrand II of Baux and Berengaria of Andria. He married, as his first wife, Beatrice of Anjou, daughter of King Charles II of Naples, in 1309; she died c. 1321. His daughter was:
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