After nearly three decades of peaceful coexistence within the specific area of Sardinia, around the mid-fourteenth century, the relationship between the king of Aragon, as sovereign of the kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica, and the Giudice of Arborea began to change.

At that moment, Giudice Marianus IV was at a crossroads: to remain a faithful vassal of the king of Aragon and to reconcile himself to a reduced role in the island; or to respond to a policy of increasing political and institutional centralization by King Peter the Ceremonious, clearly evident in the annexation of the Kingdom of Mallorca to his Crown a few years earlier. By then, the formative period of the Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica was over, and the Aragonese monarch was keen to consolidate its rule on the island, where the Giudicato of Arborea extended over a significant part of the island Regnum that was in effect divided in two. A divided Sardinia but with an increasingly dominant Arborea, one of the four post-Byzantine-era polities of the island, made the now-hereditary judge as head of each giudicato a threat to countries like Aragon. Moreover, a recent rebellion by Aragonese nobles, defeated in Épila, meant that Peter the Ceremonious was even more wary of the situation in Sardinia.

This Sardinian crisis was part of a broader international context. Indeed, the island was at the heart of a conflict between the Crown of Aragon and the Republic of Genoa for supremacy in the western Mediterranean, particularly following the Battle of the Bosphorus (the Byzantine–Genoese War (1348–1349) when the two powers had clashed.

According to Aragonese sources, the problems between the Giudice of Arborea, the Governor-General of the Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica, and royal officials had begun de facto in 1351. Marianus IV had openly broken with the Aragonese because of attitudes shown by the governor. The latter, consequently, begun to drum up charges from several witnesses who knew facts or deeds attributable to the judge. Some allegations concerned Marianus IV's request to the Roman Pontiff to enfeoff him with the Regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae in 1351. No other source confirms such an attempt by the judge to be invested with the Regnum.