Crown of Aragon

The Crown of Aragon was a composite monarchy ruled by a single king, formed by the dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona, and it existed from 1162 to 1715. At its height in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it controlled extensive Mediterranean territories including the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, parts of southern Italy and, until the late fourteenth century, Greek possessions, alongside the eastern Iberian Peninsula. Its constituent territories, primarily Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, were not united politically except at the level of the king, each maintaining its own institutions, parliaments and legal systems, so that the Crown functioned more as a confederation than a centralized kingdom until the Nueva Planta decrees abolished it following the War of the Spanish Succession between 1707 and 1716.