[Sidenote: Struggles with the nobility and the Privilege of the Union.]
Pedro’s son, Alfonso III (1285-1291), had no idea of abandoning Sicily. He made it into a separate kingdom under his brother Jaime, and the strife with France and the pope went on. Alfonso was not of his father’s calibre, however, and in 1291 agreed to renounce the Sicilian claim and to fight Jaime if the latter should fail to comply with this arrangement; furthermore, he agreed to pay the papal tribute of the treaty of Pedro II, including all back sums still unpaid. Before Alfonso could act on this agreement he died. His reign had not been free from struggles with the nobility, and the latter were in no small degree responsible for the weak result of his foreign policy; only an exceptionally capable monarch, such as Pedro III had been, could handle successfully the grave foreign and domestic problems of the time. The nobles and towns of Aragon proper and Valencia had banded together in a league called the Union, and they used their combined influence to exact new privileges from Alfonso. When he resisted they went so far as to conspire for the succession of the French pretender, and took other extreme measures which soon decided the king to give way. In 1287 he granted the famous “Privilege of the Union.”[31] By this document the king was restrained from proceeding against any member of the Union without the consent of both the _Justicia_ and the _Cortes_, and a council was to be appointed to accompany him and decide with him the matters of government affecting Aragon and Valencia. If he should fail to observe the Privilege in these and other respects (for there were other articles of lesser note) the members of the Union might elect a new king. Thus, as Alfonso III put it, “There were as many kings in Aragon as there were _ricoshombres_” (great nobles). Jaime II (1291-1327), brother of the preceding, contrived to reduce some of the privileges granted by this document, although indirectly, for he recognized its legal force. He enacted laws which were in fact inconsistent with it, and in this way managed to deprive the _Justicia_ of some of the vast power to which he had attained.
[Sidenote: Jaime II and the Sicilian question.]