THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEA\l KINGDOMS 1200-1!100began to build the close relationship with Guelf Florence
which was to characterise his reign.
Another area of success was newer to the house of Anjou.
Existing marriage alliances between the house of Anjou and
the Hungarian royal family resulted in an Angevin claim to
the throne of a powerful eastern kingdom whose dominions
stretched to the shores of the Adriatic, though it took from
1296 to 1310 for that claim to be made real, under Charles
Robert ( Carobert), grandson of Charles II of Naples. There
is no need here to examine in detail the successes of the
Angevins in Hungary. Efficient financial management, a vig-
orous policy of territorial aggrandisement, and the taming
of the great native families resulted in the creation of a
strong state with considerable influence in the politics of
central Europe, not to mention the Adriatic. The stability of
this structure must be partly attributed to Carobert's aware-
ness of Italian Angevin precedents. He did not surround
himself with an imported nobility, but relied on the native
peoples of the Hungarian kingdom. His chamberlain (comes
tavernicarum) in charge of royal finances was a native, Nekcsei
Demetrius. He did, however, consolidate the royal demesne
and extend feudal ties where practicable. It will be seen
that marriage ties were maintained with Angevin Naples,
not always to desired effect; the Neapolitan-Hungarian link
became a constant in European diplomatic relations, and
was still visible under the new dynasties that ruled both
Naples and Hungary at the end of the fifteenth century. The
proximity of Hungary to the Mediterranean, by way of the
Adriatic, as well as a yearning for access to cultural fashions
being developed in Italy, explain why the Angevin branch in
Hungary helped to draw that land into the European main-
stream, politically and culturally.^1 '
Charles II died in 1309; he was clearly less ambitious than
his father and lacked the dangerous pretensions of his cousin
Charles of Valois. Possibly the disappointment of his crusad-
ing hopes, possibly his keen interest in the more radical
- Balint Homan, Gli Angz:oini di Napoli in Ungheria, 1390-1403 (Rome,
1935) remains the only major work not written in Magyar, the work
of an author who was fmally arrested in 1945 for serious war crimes;
see also 0. Halecki, Jadwiga of Anjou and the-rise of east central Europe
(New York, 1991). pp. 19-32, but this is not the best work of a dis-
tinguished historian.