THE \\'ESTER~ MEDITERRAI'\EA'-' KINGDOl\IS 1200-1'100registered his presence by, for instance, endowing the Cister-
cian abbey of Valmagne near Montpellier with gifts.'K
Marriage alliances with the French were seen as another
way of putting an end to centuries of discord over southern
France. Less easy to manage was the relationship between
the house of Aragon and the cadet French line of Anjou.
Everywhere James trod Charles of Anjou seemed to be in
the way. Mter acquiring Provence he set his sights on Italian
politics: more of this shortly. In^1267 James I was working
hard to secure Sardinia for his second surviving son, James
of Majorca; the pope, in whose gift the island supposedly
lay, demurred, but within two years Charles's son Philip
had been proclaimed king of Sardinia by die-hard Guelfs at
Sassari.'!^1 In 1267-69, James tried to persuade the pope that
he should be granted a crusade privilege for an expedition to
the East; the pope actively discouraged the expedition, which
was rapidly scattered by Mediterranean storms. Although one
apparent reason for the lack of papal support was James's
immoral private life, it was becoming clear that papal sym-
pathies lay entirely in another direction: in 1270, Charles
became involved in, indeed perhaps helped plan, Louis IX's
disastrous crusade to Tunis, which was already becoming a
major base for Catalan merchants, mercenaries and mission-
aries, and a source of tribute for the king of Aragon.^111
Throughout his reign James grappled with the problem of
the succession. He thought of separating Aragon from Cata-
lonia, or Valencia from both of those territories. In the end
the question was resolved by the survival of only two legitim-
ate heirs, Peter andJames, the former of whom was in^1262
promised the mainland territories south of the Pyrenees, and
the latter of whom would be allowed to establish a cadet king-
dom, fully independent of Peter's realms, in the Balearics,
Roussillon and Cerdagne, and who was also to receive the
remaining lordships on French territory, Montpellier and the
- Layettes du Tresor des Charles, vol. 3, ed. J. de Laborde, Paris, 1875, docs
4399, 4400, 4411-12, 4434-5; Chronicle of San juan de Ia Peiia, trans!.
L. Nelson (Philadelphia, 1991), p. 71; J Richard, Saint Louis, trans!.
S. Lloyd (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 204-5; Abulafi.a, lHerliterranean ],·mpor-
ium, pp. 38-9. - Abulafi.a, iHediterranmn Emporium, pp. 235-45.
- J. Le Goff, Saint Louis (Paris, 1996), pp. 290-7, playing down the role
of Charles of Anjou.