In 1193, his father, King Tancred, arranged his marriage to Irene, daughter of the eastern Emperor Isaac II. Tancred then had his son Roger crowned. Roger died the next year, shortly before his father's death on the 20th of February 1194. His younger brother William III assumed the throne of Sicily under the regency of his mother Sibylla of Accera.
On the 20th of November 1194, Henry VI von Hohenstaufen, King of Germany and Emperor of Rome, entered Palermo, Sicily, and on the 25th of December William was stripped of his title. In 1197 Roger's widow, Irene, married Henry VI's brother Philip II von Hohenstaufen.