One was the Prince of Majorca, the handsome youth we have already spoken of:  he bore her off triumphant over all rivals, including the son of the King of France.  James of Aragon had one of those faces of melancholy sweetness which no woman can resist.  Great troubles nobly borne had thrown as it were a funereal veil over his youthful days:  more than thirteen years he had spent shut in an iron cage; when by the aid of a false key he had escaped from his dreadful prison, he wandered from one court to another seeking aid; it is even said that he was reduced to the lowest degree of poverty and forced to beg his bread.  The young stranger’s beauty and his adventures combined had impressed both Joan and Marie at the court of Avignon.  Marie especially had conceived a violent passion for him, all the more so for the efforts she made to conceal it in her own bosom.  Ever since James of Aragon came to Naples, the unhappy princess, married with a dagger at her throat, had desired to purchase her liberty at the expense of crime.  Followed by four armed men, she entered the prison where Robert des Baux was still suffering for a fault more his father’s than his own.  Marie stood before the prisoner, her arms crossed, her cheeks livid, her lips trembling.  It was a terrible interview.  This time it was she who threatened, the man who entreated pardon.  Marie was deaf to his prayers, and the head of the luckless man fell bleeding at her feet, and her men threw the body into the sea.  But God never allows a murder to go unpunished:  James preferred the queen to her sister, and the widow of Charles of Durazzo gained nothing by her crime but the contempt of the man she loved, and a bitter remorse which brought her while yet young to the tomb.

Joan was married in turn to James of Aragon, son of the King of Majorca, and to Otho of Brunswick, of the imperial family of Saxony.  We will pass rapidly over these years, and come to the denouement of this history of crime and expiation.  James, parted from his wife, continued his stormy career, after a long contest in Spain with Peter the Cruel, who had usurped his kingdom:  about the end of the year 1375 he died near Navarre.  Otho also could not escape the Divine vengeance which hung over the court of Naples, but to the end he valiantly shared the queen’s fortunes.  Joan, since she had no lawful heir, adopted her nephew, Charles de la Paix (so called after the peace of Trevisa).  He was the son of Louis Duras, who after rebelling against Louis of Tarentum, had died miserably in the castle of Ovo.  The child would have shared his father’s fate had not Joan interceded to spare his life, loaded him with kindness, and married him to Margaret, the daughter of her sister Marie and her cousin Charles, who was put to death by the King of Hungary.