SICILY AND SOUTHERN ITALY IN AN AGE OF DISORDERfate. Rival houses of Anjou, that of Anjou-Durazzo and that
of Anjou-Provence (strictly speaking not direct descendants
of Charles I) contested the throne; it was through Louis I of
Anjou-Provence that the French crown would in due course
be able to establish its own claim to the throne of Naples.
Louis I's own attempts to gain Naples were not backed up by
adequate resources, and yet Louis, like his successors, was to
prove able to penetrate the kingdom and to hold sizeable
areas for several years. Meanwhile, the papacy, which after
all claimed suzerain authority in the Regno, was quite unable
to assert its own rights, as Urban VI and his successors in
Rome competed with the rival Pope Clement VII and his
successors in Avignon. Thus by the late fourteenth century
both Sicilian kingdoms appeared to have descended into
anarchy.