Roger II (1093 – February 26, 1154) was King of Sicily, son of Roger I of Sicily and successor to his brother Simon. He began his rule as Count of Sicily in 1105, later became Duke of Apulia (1127), then King of Sicily (1130). Roger II's main distinction was to have united all the Norman conquests into one kingdom and to have granted them a scientific, personal and centralized government.

Roger became one of the greatest kings in Europe. At Palermo Roger drew round him distinguished men of various races, such as the famous Arab geographer Idrisi and the historian Nilus Doxopatrius. The king welcomed the learned and he maintained a complete toleration for the several creeds, races and languages of his realm. He was served by men of nationality so dissimilar as the Englishman Thomas Brun, a kaid of the Curia, and, in the fleet, by the renegade Muslim Christodoulos, and the Antiochene George, whom he made in 1132 "amiratus amiratorum," in effect prime vizier. This title, amiratus or emir, gave way to the English word admiral.

Roger made Sicily the leading maritime power in the Mediterranean. A powerful fleet was built up under several admirals, or "emirs," of whom the greatest was George of Antioch, formerly in the service of the Muslim prince of El Mehdia. Mainly by him a series of conquests were made on the African coast (1135-53) which reached from Tripoli to Cape Bona.

The Second Crusade (1147-48) offered Roger an opportunity to revive Robert Guiscard's designs on the Byzantine Empire. George was sent to Corinth at the end of 1147 and despatched an army inland which plundered Thebes. In June 1149 the admiral appeared before Constantinople and defied the Byzantine emperor by firing arrows against the palace windows. Yet the attack on the empire had no enduring results. The king died at Palermo on the 26th of February 1154, and was succeeded by his fourth son William.

Roger II's elaborate coronation cloak, later used by the Holy Roman Emperors, is now in the Imperial Treasury (Schatzkammer) in Vienna (see image).

Roger II's first marriage was to Elvira of Castile, a daughter of King Alfonso VI of Castile. When she died in 1135, rumors flew that Roger had died as well, as his grief had made him a recluse. Their sons were:
1. Roger (died 12 May 1148), heir, Duke of Apulia (from 1135), possibly also Count of Lecce
2. Tancred (died 1143), Prince of Bari (from 1135)
3. Alfonso (died 1144), Prince of Capua (from 1135) and Duke of Naples
4. William (died 7 May 1166), his successor, Duke of Apulia (from 1148)
5. Simon, Prince of Taranto

Roger II married secondly to Sibyl of Burgundy, daughter of Hugh II, Duke of Burgundy, but she died a year later in 1150.

His third marriage was to Beatrix of Rethel, a grandniece of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem. Beatrix bore him a posthumous daughter, Constance of Sicily. In addition, Roger had several bastard children, one of whom was a daughter who married Margaritone the Admiral, Lord of Malta.

Jolly Roger
In his book “Pirates and The Lost Templar Fleet”, David Hatcher Childress claims that the term Jolly Roger was coined after the King Roger, the first man to fly the flag. Childress claims that, many years later after the Templars were disbanded by the church, at least one Templar fleet split into four independent fleets that dedicated themselves to pirating ships of any country sympathetic to Rome. The flag was thus an inheritance, and its crossed bones are an obvious reference to the original Templar logo of a red cross with blunted ends.