THE MEDITERRANEAN IN THE ACE OF JAMES II OF ARAGONabout not just his own health, but also that of his family; as
a matter of fact, the succession to the throne was less smooth
than he hoped, because his eldest son James decided to
abandon both his bride and the world, becoming before
long head of the semi-monastic Military Order of Montesa.
There was currently a vogue for such renunciations; royal
heirs in Naples and Majorca took a similar course about this
time, opting for spiritual rather than earthly glory.
A good demonstration of James II's true abilities is pro-
vided by his diplomatic skills, which brought him in^1312 the
long contested Val d'Aran to the north-west of Andorra, in
the face of French claims to the territory, which was said by
France to lie on the French side of the Pyrenean watershed.^19
Such successes were rendered much easier by the increasing
efficiency of a royal administration that moved towards a
common standard in presentation of fiscal accounts, under
a single Mestre Racional for all his realms, though in virtually
all other respects the three states had separate bailiff gen-
erals responsible for the king's lands, and separate procura-
tors representing the itinerant crown in judicial matters.~^0
Attempts to integrate the territories into a single whole were
thus no more noticeable than they ever had been. This was,
then, a personal federation, and the Privilege of Union of
1319, which declared that whoever was king of Aragon was
also king of Valencia and count of Barcelona, must be seen
as an attempt to prevent the fragmentation of the house
of Barcelona into potentially rival statelets in addition to
Majorca and Sicily-Trinacria, rather than part of a strategy
for drawing Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia under a single
government. The Privilege stipulated that neither in the will
of the king nor by any royal donation could the lands be
divided or fragmented, though small donations that did not
detract from the authority of the count-king were, of course,
acceptable. The Privilege was to constitute part of each king's
coronation oath. As important, perhaps, as the Privilege of
Union was the consolidation of the count of Barcelona's con-
trol in independently minded areas such as Urgell, and on
- J. Regia i Campistol, La lucha jJor el Valle de Anin, 2 vols (Madrid,
1951); J. Lladonosa, Invasions i intents d'integraci6 de la Vall d'Aran a
Franca (Barcelona, 1967), pp. 14-24. - T.N. Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon. A short history (Oxford,
1986), p. 98.