was much luckier than the vast majority of women, including those secluded slave girls in her husband’s harim.
It was true that as she matured, she began to have misgivings about William’s prudence and his political judgments. He pursued a very aggressive foreign policy, one motivated as much by revenge as ambition, for he bore a bitter grudge against the emperor of the Greek Empire, who’d betrothed his daughter to William and then changed his mind, leaving William waiting in vain for her arrival at Taranto. William never forgot that public humiliation, and never forgave. He’d bided his time and saw his chance midst the chaos that followed the emperor’s sudden death. He dispatched the Sicilian fleet and a large army to capture Constantinople, but the result was a costly, embarrassing defeat.
Joanna had been troubled by his determination to conquer the Greek Empire, for it did not seem likely to succeed. In that, she was her father’s daughter, a pragmatist at heart. She was even more troubled by the marriage that William made to pave the way for his war. There had long been great enmity between the Kingdom of Sicily and the Holy Roman Empire, but when Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had unexpectedly offered a marital alliance, William accepted, for that would free him to devote all his efforts to the conquest of the Greek Empire. And so he’d wed his aunt Constance to Heinrich von Hohenstaufen, the King of Germany and the emperor’s eldest son and heir. The marriage created an uproar in Sicily, for it raised a frightening specter. If William were to die without a son or daughter to succeed him, Constance would be the heiress to the Sicilian throne, and the Sicilians would rather have the Devil himself rule over them than Constance’s hated German husband.
Joanna had shared the public distaste for this alliance, for the Holy Roman Emperor had long been a foe of her family’s House. Moreover, she hated to see Constance, whom she’d grown to love, sent off to exile in Germany, a cold, harsh land to a woman accustomed to the sun-splashed warmth of Palermo. Heinrich was only twenty at the time of the marriage, eleven years younger than Constance, but he’d already earned a reputation for brutality, and Joanna doubted whether even an empress’s crown would compensate Constance for the life she’d lead with Heinrich. William had brushed aside her misgivings, though, just as he ignored the impassioned, panicky objections of his subjects. He was young and healthy, after all, and Joanna had proven herself capable of bearing a son, so he was confident that Heinrich would never be able to claim Sicily on Constance’s behalf, and it irked him that others remained so adamantly opposed to their union.
Joanna had kept her qualms to herself after Constance’s marriage, for what was done was done. Nor did she blame William for not heeding her advice. Unlike her mother, who’d ruled Aquitaine in her own right, she was merely William’s consort and the power was his, not hers. She’d done her best to comfort him after his army’s devastating defeat by the Greeks, for that was a wife’s duty, but to her dismay, he vowed to continue the war at a later date. She was greatly relieved when he had to put his Greek ambitions aside, even if the cause was the disastrous news out of Outremer. The King of Jerusalem’s army had been destroyed by the forces of Salah al-Dīn, and before the year was out, he’d taken the Holy City itself. William was horrified, and he’d immediately dispatched the Sicilian fleet to the aid of Tyre, the last bastion of Christian control, while offering his harbors, riches, and armed forces to the kings who’d taken the cross and sworn to recapture Jerusalem from the Saracens.
Joanna felt some guilt that the catastrophic loss of Jerusalem should be the cause of joy, but the crusade would mean that she’d get to see her father and her brother Richard, for they’d both taken the cross. It had been thirteen years since she’d left her home and family, and she was elated at the prospect of their reunion. When word trickled across the Alps and into Italy of fresh discord between Henry and Richard, she’d refused to let it discourage her. Her father and Richard were often at odds, for they were both stubborn, strong-willed men and Richard remained embittered by the continuing confinement of their mother. She had no trouble convincing herself that they’d patch