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- BIOGRAPHY
Orlando d'Aragona, Barone di Siracusa, was born about 1292 to 1296, the illegitimate son of Fadrique II of Aragón, king of Sicily, by his mistress Sibilla Sormella. With his wife Beatrice del Caretto he had a son Gioavanozzo, born about 1334, who would have progeny.
During his father's reign he lived in the shadows, but he rose to influence in the courts of his half-brother Pietro II and Pietro's sons Luigi and Fadrique III, especially as the leader of the Catalan party after the death in 1348 of his half-brother Giovanni d'Aragona, duke of Randazzo.
In 1339, he was present fighting the Angevins then trying to conquer Lipari. Taken captive, he was freed in November 1340 through the interference of a Sienese widow, Camiola Turinga, a woman he had promised to marry. He never did and was considered highly ungrateful by contemporaries, including Boccaccio.
From 1343 to 1345 he was governor of Palermo, and in 1345 strategos of Messina. He supported the regency of his half-brother Giovanni, duke of Randazzo, as regent during the reign of Pietro II's son, the young Luigi of Aragón as king of Sicily, and he then supported his sister-in-law Elisabeth von Kärnten as regent of Sicily after Luigi's death in 1355. He was sent as an ambassador to Sardinia on behalf of Pedro IV 'le Ceremonieux', king of Aragón, in 1353. He continued to help Elisabeth into the reign of his other nephew Fadrique III, who appointed him duke of Athens and Neopatria.
He was a soldier and a general during the last wars between the houses of Barcelona and Anjou for possession of Trinacria. He distinguished himself in the Battle of Aci and in defending Messina from the Angevins. In 1358 he reconquered the area from Vizzini to Avola. He died in 1361 in a spring skirmish at Caltanissetta, during the war between Federico Chiaramonte and Francesco Ventimiglia.
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