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Crown of Aragon, A Mediterranean Empire
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The Crown of Aragon (Aragonese: Corona d'Aragón, Catalan: Corona d'Aragó, Latin: Corona Aragonum, Spanish: Corona de Aragón) was a composite monarchy, also nowadays referred to as a confederation of individual polities or kingdoms ruled by one king with a personal and dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the county of Barcelona. At the height of its power in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Crown of Aragon was a thalassocracy (a state with primarily maritime realms) controlling a large portion of the present-day eastern Spain and southwestern France, as well as some of the major islands and mainland possessions stretching across the Mediterranean as far as Greece. The component realms of the Crown were not united politically except at the level of the king, who ruled over each autonomous polity according to its own laws, raising funds under each tax structure, dealing separately with each cortes. Put in contemporary terms, it has sometimes been considered that the different lands of the Crown of Aragon functioned more as a confederacy of cultures rather than as a single country. In this sense, the larger Crown of Aragon must not be confused with one of its constituent parts, the Kingdom of Aragon, from which it takes its name.
In 1469, a new dynastic familial union of the Crown of Aragon with the Crown of Castile by the Catholic Monarchs, joining what contemporaries referred to as "the Spains", led to what would become the Kingdom of Spain under King Philip II. The Crown existed until it was abolished by the Nueva Planta decrees issued by King Philip V in 1716 as a consequence of the defeat of Archduke Charles in the War of the Spanish Succession. Template:/box-footer
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Almogavars is the name of a class of soldier from many Christian Iberian kingdoms in the later phases of the Reconquista, during the 13th and 14th centuries. Almogavars were lightly clad, quick-moving frontiersmen and foot-soldiers. They hailed from the Kingdom of Aragon, Kingdom of Valencia, Crown of Castile and Kingdom of Portugal. At first these troops were formed by farmers and shepherds originating from the countryside, woods and frontier mountain areas. Later, they were employed as mercenaries in Italy, Latin Greece and the Levant.
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Agnes of Aquitaine of Agnes of Poitou (died in c. 1159) was Queen of Aragon as the wife of King Ramiro II. She was a daughter of William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, and Philippa, Countess of Toulouse. After his fist husband was died, Agnes was secondly married to Ramiro II of Aragon; the couple probably wed on November 13 of 1135 in the cathedral of Jaca. The exact reason for the marriage was that Agnes had already borne children; if she could have four surviving children, then she would probably be able to give Ramiro a surviving heir. The couple had a daughter, Petronilla, who later succeeded her father as Queen of Aragon. Template:/box-footer
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