County of Sicily was created by Robert Guiscard in 1071 for his younger brother Roger Bosso. Guiscard himself had received the title Duke of Sicily ("dux Siciliae") in 1059 from Pope Nicholas II as encouragement to conquer it from the Muslims. In 1061 the first permanent Norman conquest (Messina) was made and in 1071, after the fall of Palermo, the capital of the emirate and future capital of the county, Guiscard invested Roger with the title of count and gave him full jurisdiction in the island save for half the city of Palermo, Messina, and the Val Demone, which he retained for himself.
Frederick III of Sicily the Simple, though he himself did not use an ordinal. Frederick was born in Barcelona to Peter III of Aragon and Constance of Sicily, daughter of King Manfred of Sicily. When his father died in 1285, he left the Kingdom of Aragon to his eldest son, Alfonso, and that of Sicily to his second son, James. When Alfonso died in 1291, James became king of Aragon and left Frederick as regent in Sicily. The war between the Angevins, who contested the title to Sicily from their peninsular possessions centred on Naples (the so-called Kingdom of Naples), and the Crown of