Roger I of Sicily

Roger I (; ; ; Norse: Rogierr; – 22 June 1101), nicknamed “Roger Bosso” and “Grand Count Roger”, was a Norman nobleman who became the first Grand count of Sicily from 1071 to 1101. As a member of the House of Hauteville, he participated in several military expeditions against the Emirate of Sicily (beginning in 1061). He was later invested with part of Sicily by his brother, Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia, in 1071. By 1090, he had conquered the entire island. In 1091, he conquered Malta. The state he created was merged with the Duchy of Apulia in 1127 and became the Kingdom of Sicily in 1130. His descendants in the male line continued to rule Sicily down to 1194. Early life Roger was born in Normandy, probably in the village of Hauteville-la-Guichard, of which his father was seigneur. He was the youngest son of Tancred de Hauteville and his second wife Fressenda. Through his mother he was possibly grandson of Richard the Fearless. Little is known about his and his brothers’s life before the expeditions to southern Italy. Arrival to Italy and Conquest of Calabria Roger arrived in Southern Italy as a young man in the summer of 1057. The Benedictine monk Goffredo Malaterra, who compares Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger to "Joseph and Benjamin of old," gives this description of Roger: