Charles of Taranto

Charles of Taranto (1296 – 29 August 1315) was the eldest son of Philip I, Prince of Taranto and titular Latin Emperor of Constantinople, and his wife, Thamar Angelina Komnene, daughter of the Despot of Epirus, Nikephoros I Komnenos Doukas.

Charles' father, Philip, was invested with the Principality of Achaea in southern Greece in 1307. However, there existed a rival claim to the principality in the person of Matilda of Hainaut, the wife of Guy II de la Roche, Duke of Athens. Guy was made Philip's bailli in Achaea, but he died in 1308 without children, leaving Matilda a widow. In 1309, the fifteen-year-old Matilda was betrothed to the twelve-year-old Charles, in an attempt to reconcile the competing claims to Achaea. The ceremony took place at Thebes on 2 April, in the presence of the Latin Archbishop of Athens, the Angevin bailli and the assembled nobility of Achaea and the Duchy of Athens.

The betrothal between Charles and Matilda was dissolved in 1313, and Matilda married Louis of Burgundy, as part of a complex marital pact wherein Matilda was ceded Achaea (although Philip retained suzerain rights over the principality, which he had held since 1294). As part of a series of marriages and pacts that year, Philip made a second marriage to Catherine of Valois, titular Latin Empress (who had been betrothed to Louis' brother, Hugh V of Burgundy), while Charles was betrothed to his new stepmother's sister, Joan of Valois in compensation for the breaking off of his previous engagement.

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