Worn out by incessant campaigning, King Louis fell victim to a malarial fever on June 5, 1362, in the forty-third year of his age.
Soon afterwards Joan married James of Aragon, King of Minorca, who had first fallen in love with her at Avignon, where the history of his fortunes and adventures, combined with the melancholy handsomeness of him, had made a deep impression both upon Joan and upon her sister. For James of Aragon had spent no less than thirteen years of his life as a prisoner in an iron cage, and was even said to have been reduced to the necessity of begging his bread. No sooner was he married to Joan than he devoted himself to making war upon Pedro the Cruel, the usurper of his throne, and died near Navarre, in 1375.
After King James’ demise, Joan married again, as her fourth husband, Duke Otho of Brunswick; by now, having no children alive of her own, she adopted as her successor Charles of Durazzo, her nephew by marriage, whose life she had saved.
During the next few years Joan, as the result of a quarrel with Pope Urban VI (who as Bartolomeo Prignani had been formerly one of her own subjects), gave her support to the anti-Pope, Clement VII, whom she sheltered in the Castello dell’ Uovo. For this she was promptly excommunicated, being at the same time declared deposed from the throne, whilst her subjects were formally relieved of their allegiance to her. The Crown of Naples was bestowed by the Holy Father upon Charles of Durazzo, whom Joan had already proclaimed her successor and who now showed his gratitude in the following remarkable manner: Hastily borrowing an army from his great uncle, old King Louis of Hungary, who was still alive, Charles set out for Naples, where his wife and their two children were even then living as honoured guests and relatives under Joan’s roof. So soon as she learned of this, Joan sent word to Louis of Anjou, brother of the King of France, to say that she appointed him her successor instead of Charles and begging him to come to her aid against the latter.
On the approach of Charles’ army, Joan sent out his wife and children to plead with him that he would treat her generously; but, instead of doing so, Charles laid siege to Joan in the Castel Nuovo; her husband, Duke Otho, he had blockaded behind him in the castle of Aversa. At length, though, the German fought his way through the containing force before Aversa and fell upon Charles of Durazzo’s flank and rear guard by way of Piedigrotta. Long the unequal combat raged, but at last when Otho himself, after being wounded and having broken his sword, and, thanks to his leading his men and becoming separated from them in the midst of the enemy, had been taken prisoner, the little remnant of his followers, surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, had no choice but to surrender. Whereupon, Charles of Durazzo redoubled his efforts against the Castel Nuovo and, shortly afterwards, succeeded in taking it; after which he wrote to the King of Hungary to say that the Queen of Naples was his prisoner and asking that monarch’s good pleasure in regard to her.
Some months now passed, during which Otho of Brunswick, on promising to quit Neapolitan territory for ever, was given his liberty; and the French army of Louis of Anjou compelled to abandon its march upon Naples. At the end of that time an answer was received from the King of Hungary, commanding that Joan should be put to death as a last propitiatory sacrifice to his murdered brother.
Since the taking of Naples the Queen had been sent for safekeeping to the castle of Muro in Calabria.
On the 5th of May, 1385, as she was praying in her room there, that looked out over the ravine and the town below, the door was opened very stealthily, so that the Queen thought it was one of her maids and did not turn her head to look at the intruder. Nor did she ever, in all probability, see who it was that had entered; for, in the same moment, a cord was slipped over her head and swiftly drawn tight about her throat as only a man of strong hands could draw it; so that she died instantly, her unfinished prayer upon her lips. And the four Hungarian soldiers, who had seen her die, left her lying there and went away quietly to report to their commanding officer that the thing was done as it had been ordered. And the cord with which they had done it was the same with which Andrew of Hungary had been strangled at Aversa; so, at least, it is said.