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William II
was the son of William I, grandson of Roger II. His mother was Margaret
of
Navarre and she was his regent during his minority. His reign was
characterized by conflict between competing Christian factions and
William's power was limited. William sponsored the Benedictine abbey at
Monreale, with the hope it would become a religious counterweight to
power concentrated by the bishop of Palermo. William's mother
encouraged the in-migration of Spanish and Norman knights and the
kingdom became increasingly Latinized. William himself was comfortable
with Greek and Arab culture, although Sicily as a whole was moving
towards the generalized Latin intolerance of Islam, a product of the
crusades. The fact that Jerusalem fell to Saladin in 1187 acerbated
Christian-Islam tensions in his lands.