Members of a large number of other French aristocratic families spent time in the Regno and either then returned to France carrying with them at least some noticeable influence from their time abroad, or decided to remain where they were, keeping in touch with their relations in France, and offering temporary hospitality to visiting members of their extended families in their new homes. One thing many of the greater families to be discussed here had in common was an interest in the eastern Mediterranean well before Charles of Anjou's conquest of the Regno. For such families, the disappearance of the Hohenstaufen and the emergence of the Angevins as the ruling house in southern Italy and Sicily channelled their dreams in slightly new directions; but it did not alter those dreams themselves. In practice, many of these found themselves doing more for Charles and his successors than the Angevins were prepared to do for them. By contrast, other lesser families who had been intimately bound up with the Angevin dynasty before the conquest and came to the Regno purely to follow their lord usually found their services reasonably well rewarded.

Of the families of the higher aristocracy, the most distinguished were the Courtenays who had been major figures in European society from 1216, the date at which Pierre de Courtenay became Latin emperor of Constantinople.