"Frederick the Simple" is often confused with an earlier Sicilian monarch, Frederick II, who chose to call himself "Frederick III", even though he was actually only the second King Frederick to occupy the Sicilian throne, as also this Fredrick has been dubbed by later generations of genealogists and historians as Frederick III.
The beginning of Frederick III's reign was plagued by intermittent wars with the Kingdom of Naples and also by the Black Death, to which his elder brother and predecessor had succumbed. In 1372 he was able to come to peace terms with Naples and the Papacy and was titled as a Tributary King of "Trinacria."