THE ORIGINS OF THE SICILIAN KINGDOMwere also an issue: the problem of whether the barons could
over-ride the assumed rights of inheritance arose in 1189
when William II died and no one in Sicily was especially
keen to accept as king the heir to the German throne, who
was married to Roger II's daughter Constance of Hauteville.
On this occasion, the pope and the barons were of one
mind, fearful of the implications in allowing the German
crown to dominate not just its homeland and northern
Italy, but also southern Italy and Sicily. Such an accretion of
power would spell the end of the autonomy of the papacy
in central Italy.
Under Roger II and his heirs William the Bad and William
the Good, the kings of Sicily adapted the existing Greek
and Arab bureaucracies in Sicily and southern Italy, utilising
skilled professional administrators, some native, some from
abroad, and developing a multilingual administration that
could address the needs of the monarchy and also communic-
ate with the king's subjects.^13 Justice was effectively dispensed
in far-flung provinces (parts of central Italy, the Abruzzi and
Molise were brought definitively under Norman rule under
Roger), and tensions between Muslims, Greeks and Latins
were held in check, at least under Roger II. Under the two
Williams, power shifted away from the bureaucrats, and the
Latin baronage acquired growing influence at court; Muslim
and even Greek administrators were pushed more to the mar-
gins; thousands of Italian settlers were lured into the king-
dom, a policy that started as early as the rule of Roger I in
Sicily.^14 What must be stressed is that the 'Norman kingdom
of Sicily' was not particularly 'Norman', though there was
a large scattering of Norman barons who intermarried with
the local Lombard nobility in southern Italy. The adminis-
trative structure of the kingdom owed little to the Normans,
except for local customs; the Normans certainly did not
create a 'feudal structure', but melted into what was there
already. Those who believe in a strong Norman identity tend
to qualifY their assertions (and this is some qualification!) by
insisting that one major characteristic of Normans was their
- H. Takayama, The Administration of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily (Leiden,
1993); E. Jamison, Admiral Eugenius of Sicily. His life and wvrk (London,
1958). - David Abulafia, 'The end of Muslim Sicily', in James M. Powell, Mus-
lims under Latin rule, 1100-1300 (Princeton, 1990), pp. 101-33.