Antonia of Baux
second Queen consort of Frederick III the Simple, King of Sicily (1355-1374)
Antonia of Baux (Italian: Antonia del Balzo; c. 1353 – 23 January 1375), was an Italian noblewoman member of the French House of Baux (italianized as del Balzo) and by marriage Queen consort of Sicily, Duchess consort of Athens and Neopatras.
Birth and family
The exact birthplace of Antonia of Baux is not known. She was born around 1353 and was the second child and first daughter of Francis of Baux, member of the House of Baux and 1st Duke of Andria, Count of Montescaglioso, Squillace, Avellino and Teano and his second wife, Margaret of Taranto, princess from the Capetian House of Anjou. Her paternal grandparents were Bertrand III of Baux, 1st Count of Andria and Marguerite d'Aunay, and her maternal grandparents were Philip I, Prince of Taranto and Catherine II of Valois, titular Latin Empress of Constantinople and Princess of Achaea.
Queen of Sicily
On 26 November 1373, Antonia married Frederick IV, King of Sicily, Duke of Athens and Neopatras. The bride was approximately twenty years old and the groom thirty-one. The marriage sealed the peace between the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, priorly agreed, and was the result of the diplomatic efforts of Pope Gregory IX, who wanted to end the war between both Kingdoms, which began as early as 1313. He managed to convince King Frederick IV and Queen Joanna I of Naples of the need for a peace agreement, secured by a dynastic marriage between both countries. For this, the Pope even prevented the planned marriage between the King of Sicily and Antonia Visconti, daughter of the Lord of Milan; acting in the interests of the papacy, Pope Gregory IX supported the independence of the Kingdom of Sicily from the Kingdom of Aragon.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Antonia of Baux” as second Queen consort of Frederick III the Simple, King of Sicily (1355-1374). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as second Queen consort of Frederick III the Simple, King of Sicily (1355-1374). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q789780. VIAF identifies the subject as 2134152636062620050977. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1353, 1375, 1373 and 1313.
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This entry incorporates text from “Antonia of Baux” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.