William II of Sicily
King of Sicily · Italy · On the map · Lived 1153 to 1189 · aged 36
William II, called the Good, was king of Sicily from 1166 to 1189. From surviving sources William's character is indistinct. Lacking in military enterprise, secluded and pleasure-loving, he seldom emerged from his palace life at Palermo. Yet his reign is marked by an ambitious foreign policy and a vigorous diplomacy.
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Champion of the papacy and in secret league with the Lombard cities, he was able to defy the common enemy, Frederick Barbarossa. Recent scholarship has also stressed that the relative stability of William's reign on the mainland rested less on the disappearance of aristocratic power than on a continuing political settlement in which counts, lesser barons, and royal military officers remained central to the governance of Apulia and the Terra di Lavoro. In the Divine Comedy, Dante places William II in Paradise. He is also referred to in Boccaccio's Decameron.