In 1282 AD, the Kingdom of Sicily is under the rule of a tyrannical French king and subject to his brutal Angevin army. Daily acts of violence and persecution are commonplace in a once-prosperous realm.
For twenty-year-old Aetna Vespiri, daughter of a revered Sicilian knight, survival has become second nature. As a child, she witnessed the destruction of her family’s vineyard by Angevin soldiers and spent the next decade learning the tenets of stiletto blade combat.
Years later in Palermo, as the evening bells toll for Vespers, Aetna fends off a nefarious sergeant and sparks an uprising against the Angevin occupation. Now, standing at the forefront of an accelerating people’s rebellion, Aetna finds herself fighting not only for a nation she believes in but also for the meaning of family. In her darkest hour, this dauntless Sicilian woman steps out of obscurity and into the pages of history. The legend of "Siciliana" is born.
Set amid bustling Arab markets and brooding Norman fortresses, "Siciliana" will envelop readers in the sights, sounds, and dangers lurking around every corner of medieval Sicily.
The Sicilian Vespers (vespiri siciliani) was a successful rebellion on the island of Sicily that broke out at Easter 1282 against the rule of the French-born king Charles I, who had ruled the Kingdom of Sicily since 1266.
The island of Sicily had been part of the Kingdom of Sicily, which had encompassed the southern Italian peninsula since the early 12th century, when Roger II of Sicily defeated the Italian mainland barons and was elected king by the pope. His reign had been inherited by Frederick II of Sicily, whose son Manfred would be ousted by the French invasion of Charles I of Anjou. The French rule soon assumed a repressive and ferocious nature.
On Easter Monday (30 March) 1282, at the Church of the Holy Spirit just outside Palermo, at evening prayer (vespers), a Frenchman harassed a Sicilian woman. Accounts differ as to what the harassment entailed, who the woman was, and who the Frenchman was. Fed up with years of oppression, insolence and brutality, the cry went up - "moranu li Francis" - death to the French!. This single event led to the massacre of four thousand French men and women within twenty four hours, and possibly as many as thirteen thousand over the course of the next six weeks. The government of Charles lost control of the island - and the War of the Sicilian Vespers was underway.
The Chronica of the Catalan mercenary Ramon Muntaner (d.1336) recounts the rebellion of the peoples of Sicily wherein he notes that "... all Sicily rebelled against King Charles and they killed all the Frenchmen they could find ..". Although a contemporary of the times, he too ascribes no one single person as the catalyst for the events whose "... efficiency and ruthlessness frightened monarchs far beyond Naples and Rome ..." according to renowned author Louis Mendola.
Instead Treviso, in this fictional account, has given the rebellion a voice and a focal point - a woman - as most accounts lay the reasons for the massacre of the French firmly in the camp of outrages committed against a woman or women leaving Church during the holy week of Easter. The continuance of the initial rebellion, however, has since been credited to one Alaimo da Lentini, a former supporter of the Angevan presence in Sicily and now ally of the Aragonese.
Treviso begins by recounting Siciliana's beginnings and thus the events that led her to champion the people and led the rebellion. This was no easy task - and there was much opposition to the rebels, including from the Sicilian nobility and the Church, whose current favoured position was under threat. Once we return to 1282, the countdown to the Vespers begins in earnest as we go behind the scenes to various places and locales within the city of Palermo, watching and waiting as the tinderbox is about to be lit.
Treviso provides an engaging and at times, fraught narrative, as the players on the chessboard are being slowly and carefully positioned for the impending finale.
As an avid student of Sicilian history, I welcomed this fictional account of one of many a major turning point the history of this island nation.
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