Sicily appears in the Decameron as an island kingdom whose changing rulers alter private lives, and as a maritime setting where love, abduction, and political authority meet. The stories connect its shores to journeys across the sea, but also show how the island’s dynastic struggles can reach into households: a revolt restores one family, a king’s custody endangers another, and a prince’s defiance ends in execution.

Island, Kingdom, and Contested Rule

After the death of Frederick II, Manfred was crowned king of Sicily. Arrighetto Capece, a Neapolitan gentleman with the governance of the island in his hands, prepared to flee after learning that Charles I of Anjou had defeated and killed Manfred at the Battle of Benevento. The Sicilians discovered Arrighetto’s plan, however, and imprisoned him along with other adherents of Manfred, delivering them and the island to the new ruler. Sicily’s transfer of power thus begins not as a distant change of sovereignty but as the immediate cause of arrest, flight, and family separation.

That political settlement proves temporary. Years later, the King of Aragon who consoles Lisa and arranges her marriage raises Sicily against Charles I of Anjou, with the procurement of Giovanni da Procida, and takes the island from him. Currado Malespina welcomes the revolt as a Ghibelline. For Giusfredi Capece, who has spent fourteen years ranging the world as a beggar and is now imprisoned, news of the uprising is at first bitter: the political change he had hoped for has come while he is unable to act on it. His outburst to his gaoler prompts him to reveal that he is Arrighetto’s son and that his assumed identity conceals his birth name. The island’s rebellion turns a private disclosure into a possibility of return.

The restoration is completed through a chain of recognitions and messages. Giusfredi’s account matches the news sent by Currado Malespina’s messenger; Guasparrino d'Oria, who had held Giusfredi’s family in servitude, acknowledges his former treatment of the youth and gives his daughter in marriage with a substantial dowry. A further report tells the wedding guests that Arrighetto has escaped captivity during the revolt, become a captain in the movement against Charles, and been restored to his honours and possessions by the Aragonese king. He has also sent a ship for his wife and son. The family leaves for Sicily with Spina, and Arrighetto welcomes them in Palermo. Here the island’s political reversal becomes a domestic reunion: captivity gives way to restored rank, marriages, and a return to the household that had been scattered.

Royal Custody and a Lover’s Rescue

Sicily is also the destination of a violent abduction in the story of Gianni di Procida and Restituta. Restituta, a young woman from Ischia, is seized by Sicilian sailors while alone on the shore. After the captors dispute over her, they take her to Palermo and present her to Frederick, King of Sicily. The king values her beauty, but because he is temporarily infirm he orders her lodged and cared for in La Cuba, his garden pavilion, until he is stronger. The place that shelters her is also a royal enclosure, and the king’s control of her movement makes rescue difficult.

Gianni learns that Restituta has been taken to Palermo and kept at La Cuba. He stays near the garden after sending away his boat, eventually seeing her at a window and being seen by her in return. Their recognition renews their hope, but it does not release them from royal power: they are discovered together, condemned to be burned at a stake, and bound for execution. Their danger is resolved when Ruggieri dell'Oria recognizes Gianni and explains his family’s political standing. Gianni is the son of Landolfo di Procida and the nephew of Giovanni da Procida, whose efforts helped make the king ruler of the island; Restituta is the daughter of Marino Bolgaro, whose influence had protected the king’s officers in Ischia. Once the king confirms the account, he releases the pair, clothes them richly, arranges their marriage, and sends them home with gifts. Sicily’s court first turns a lovers’ meeting into a capital offense, then uses recognition of political kinship and service to convert punishment into honour.

Sea Routes, Abduction, and Return

The story of Beritola Caracciola places Sicily within a larger sequence of sea-borne displacement. Pregnant and afraid after Arrighetto’s capture, she abandons her possessions and flees with her young son Giusfredi. She reaches Lipari, gives birth to Scacciato, and sets out by ship for Naples with both children and a nurse. Contrary winds carry the vessel to Ponza. While Beritola is ashore, corsairs take the ship; the nurse and the children are carried to Genoa and allotted as slaves to Guasparrino d'Oria. The route away from Sicily therefore does not lead directly to safety: a storm and a raid separate the mother from her sons and place them in another household’s service. Beritola’s own survival on the island, and the nurse’s decision to conceal the children’s identities, preserve the possibility of their eventual return.

Other stories give the sea around Sicily a different force. In the account of Gianni and Restituta, Sicilian sailors carry a captive from Ischia to the court at Palermo, making maritime movement the means by which private desire becomes a royal possession. In the story of Gerbino, the sea instead becomes the route of an attempted rescue and a breach of sworn allegiance. Gerbino attacks a ship belonging to the King of Tunis in an effort to carry off that king’s daughter. When the people aboard kill her, Gerbino kills them; he is later beheaded. His grandfather, King Guglielmo II of Sicily, had pledged his faith concerning the ship. The episode makes the ruler’s obligation to an external sovereign collide with his grandson’s action, and the island’s royal household cannot evade the consequences of that broken pledge.

Sicily as a Point of Connection

Across these episodes, Sicily is more than a backdrop. Its rulers and political alliances determine whether a journey ends in slavery, marriage, or death; its shores and nearby islands are joined to routes that carry families and lovers between places. The Capece narrative ties the island’s changing sovereignty to a family’s dispersal and recovery. The story of Gianni and Restituta places a captive within the king’s garden and makes political recognition the key to her release. Gerbino’s story shows the opposite outcome: royal connections cannot undo a fatal violation of allegiance. Together, these narratives make Sicily a place where the public struggles over rule and the intimate stakes of love and kinship repeatedly converge.