Background
Regency of his mother
William was only eleven years old at the death of his father William I, when he was placed under the regency of his mother, Margaret of Navarre.
Regency of his mother
William was only eleven years old at the death of his father William I, when he was placed under the regency of his mother, Margaret of Navarre.
William"s character is very 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.
In the Divine Comedy, Dante places William II in Paradise.
He is also referred to in Boccaccio"s Decameron (tale V7). Marriage and alliances
This was not his first attempted marriage.
An earlier effort by Bertrand II, archbishop of Trani, to negotiate the hand of a Byzantine princess yielded no fruit. In July 1177, William sent a delegation of Archbishop Romuald of Salerno and Count Roger of Andria to sign the Treaty of Venice with the Emperor.
This step, of great consequence to the Norman realm, was possibly taken that William might devote himself to foreign conquests.
Wars with Egypt and Greece
Unable to revive the African dominion, William directed his attack on Ayyubid Egypt, from which Saladin threatened the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. In July 1174, 30,000 men were landed before Alexandria, but Saladin"s arrival forced the Sicilians to re-embark in disorder. A better prospect opened in the confusion in Byzantine affairs which followed the death of Manuel Comnenus (1180), and William took up the old design and feud against the Byzantine empire.
Dyrrhachium was captured (11 June 1185).
Afterwards while the army (allegedly 80,000 men including 5,000 knights) marched upon Thessalonica, the fleet (200 ships) sailed towards the same target capturing on their way the Ionian islands of Corfu, Cephalonia, Ithaca and Zakynthos. In August Thessalonica fell to the joint attack of the Sicilian fleet and army and was subsequently sacked (7,000 Greeks died).
The troops then marched upon the capital, but the army of the emperor Isaac Angelus defeated the invaders on the banks of the Strymon (7 November 1185). Thessalonica was at once abandoned and in 1189 William made peace with Isaac, abandoning all the conquests.
He was now planning to induce the crusading armies of the West to pass through his territories, and seemed about to play a leading part in the Third Crusade.
His admiral Margarito, a naval genius equal to George of Antioch, with 60 vessels kept the eastern Mediterranean open for the Franks, and forced the all-victorious Saladin to retire from before Tripoli in the spring of 1188. In November 1189 William died at Palermo, leaving no children. Though Robert of Torigni records a short-lived son in 1181: Bohemond, who was named Duke of Apulia.
William"s title of "the Good" is due perhaps less to his character than to the cessation of internal troubles in his reign.