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Historical person
1155–1189
William II of Sicily, later remembered by the epithet “the Good,” became king in 1166 while still a child and ruled one of the Mediterranean’s most wealthy and culturally diverse kingdoms. His court inherited the Norman institutions that governed Sicily’s Latin Christian, Greek and Muslim populations and maintained important diplomatic connections with western Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.
In 1177 William married Joan of England, daughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, at Palermo. His reign included the construction and patronage associated with Monreale and an ambitious but unsuccessful expedition against the Byzantine Empire in 1185. He died without a surviving legitimate heir in 1189, opening a succession struggle in Sicily.
In Ariana Franklin’s The Assassin’s Prayer, William is the royal bridegroom awaiting Joan at the end of the princess’s journey from Henry II’s domains. The marriage and destination are historical; the murders threatening the procession are part of the novel’s fictional mystery.
Series
The Mistress of the Art of Death series follows Adelia Aguilar, a physician trained in Salerno whose knowledge of anatomy makes her an extraordinary investigator in twelfth-century England. Beginning in Cambridge in 1171, the novels place murder inquiries inside the reign of Henry II, where royal government, church…
All books in this series
