1/2 Pierreale - Juan II de Aragón

Juan II ruled Sicily nominally through his son Ferrante, who had seized the Neapolitan throne in 1458 following Alfonso V's death — a succession immediately contested by René of Anjou and his French-backed claimants. The half pierreale was a fractional silver denomination inherited from the earlier Aragonese monetary system in Sicily, the pierreale itself tracing back to the reforms of Peter III in the thirteenth century. Juan's name appears on Sicilian coinage largely as an assertion of dynastic legitimacy during two decades of continuous dynastic turbulence on the Italian peninsula.