Four dates that changed its history
In the 12th century, the Crown of Aragon was still establishing its position on the peninsula and across the Pyrenees, but over the following two centuries, its course would change dramatically.
Four events allow us to follow this transformation: the death of Alfonso I in 1134, the defeat of Peter II at Muret in 1213, the conquest of Valencia in 1238, and the birth of Peter IV in 1319.
The succession crisis that changed Aragon's course
On September 7, 1134, Alfonso I the Battler, King of Aragon and Pamplona, died from wounds suffered at the Battle of Fraga. He had no children and had bequeathed his domains to the military orders in his will, a decision that triggered a serious crisis.
Consequently, the Aragonese nobles chose his brother Ramiro as his successor; he was a monk who had to abandon religious life to assume the Crown.
In Pamplona, however, García Ramírez established himself as king, and that succession separated the destinies of Aragon and Pamplona once again, forcing the Aragonese monarchy to seek new ways to expand and consolidate its power.
Muret changes the destiny of Aragon
Nearly eighty years later, the scene was about to change again.
On September 12, 1213, Peter II of Aragon died at the Battle of Muret, fighting against the forces led by Simon de Montfort—a confrontation that took place north of the Pyrenees and proved decisive for Aragonese aspirations in Occitania.
The defeat ended much of the influence that the Aragonese monarchs had developed in those territories, and the Crown had to seek another path for growth. This new course would lead toward the southern peninsula and the Mediterranean.
The change became visible during the reign of James I the Conqueror.
On September 28, 1238, after a long siege, Valencia surrendered to Christian troops, and this conquest represented a massive territorial expansion for the Crown of Aragon and created a new political space on the peninsula.
Days later, on October 9, James I made his solemn entry into the city.
Valencia also held an extraordinary position: its incorporation provided the Crown with extensive Mediterranean territory and strengthened its prospects for commercial and military expansion.
The conquest did not end there: the Balearic Islands had also been incorporated years earlier, turning the Crown of Aragon into a power increasingly linked to the Mediterranean.
Peter IV and a powerful Crown
On September 5, 1319, Peter IV of Aragon, known as the Ceremonious, was born in Balaguer. When he reached the throne decades later, he inherited a Crown far more extensive and complex than the one Alfonso I had known.
During his long reign, he had to face significant conflicts within his own territories and wars with other peninsular powers. He also consolidated the Aragonese presence in the Mediterranean, in an era when the Crown held interests and domains that went far beyond Aragon.
Between 1134 and 1319, 185 years had passed, and in that time, Aragon had weathered a succession crisis, lost much of its ambition north of the Pyrenees, and found new opportunities for expansion toward Valencia, the islands, and the Mediterranean.
The history of the Crown had changed direction, from the heart of the Pyrenees to a power with interests across much of the western Mediterranean; it was precisely this transformation that Peter IV received as his political inheritance.
The monarch did not start from a small Pyrenean kingdom, but from a Crown formed by territories with very different interests, institutions, and problems, whose cohesion he would have to defend during one of the most complex reigns in the history of the Crown of Aragon.
