THE RISE AND FALL OF CHARLES OF ANJOUstructure at this level is more reminiscent of Catalonia or the
Latin East, a world in which really great nobles were a rarity,
but in which there existed an extensive nobility of more than
moderate means. If the prosperity of the leading families
depended heavily on their ties to the royal court, it is not
difficult to envisage the problems engendered when the royal
court itself was based far away in Naples, and when the king
seemed more preoccupied with business in Provence and
even Anjou than with Sicily. There was, then, a disjuncture:
the mainland, which had posed difficulties for earlier kings
because of the extent of baronial power there, was the ideal
base from which to conduct an active policy in northern Italy
and further afield; but it was on the island of Sicily that royal
power had traditionally been expressed most forcefully
through the effective exclusion of noble grandees who could
rival royal authority. Put differently, the crown was based in
the wrong place to achieve the necessary degree of political
coexistence with its island subjects, whose relationship to the
crown existed on a different basis to that found in southern
Italy. It could be said that Norman government was predic-
ated on the assumption that the island would be the base
and focus of royal government; Hohenstaufen and Angevin
government thus appeared from Sicily to be exclusively dedic-
ated to maximising income from Sicily's resources, notably
the massive grain trade which the Angevins always took care
to police with thoroughness. Government no longer seemed
to be geared to the prime interests of the island's more
powerful inhabitants.
Another complication in^1282 that is often cited is the
Byzantine issue. The opposition of the Greek population
of eastern Sicily to Charles's Byzantine crusade has also been
seen as a factor in the rebellion, notably in studies by Deno
Geanakoplos.^44 The argument that the Greeks were hostile
to Charles because of his enmity towards the Byzantine
emperor Michael VIII seems implausible, however, at a time
- DJ. Geanakoplos, 'The Greek population of South Italy and Sicily
and its attitude to Charles of Anjou and Michael Palaeologus before
and during the early phase of the Sicilian Vespers', XI Congresso di
Storia della Corona d'Aragona: La Societii mediterranea all'epoca del Vespro.
VII Centenario del Vespro Siciliano, 4 vols (Palermo, 1983-84), vol. 3,
pp. 177-82; repr. in DJ. Geanakoplos, Constantinople and the West
(Madison, Wis., 1989), pp. 189-95.