Dynastic Succession in the Kingdom of Jerusalem: The Disintegration of the Angevin Dynasty of King Fulk I of Jerusalem (1131-43).

   The Angevins, from the county of Anjou, had taken over tghe Kingdom of Jerusalem from the Lorrainers, the lineage of Godfrey of Boullon, the first king (the direct line of Godfrey and the two Baldwins had run out out when Baldwin II had only daughters).   Count Fulk of Anjou gave away his county in France, came east, married the oldest daughter, Melisende, and produced two reasonably competent sons:  Baldwin III and Amalric.  There was tension between these "foreigners" and the queen and her noble supporters who had been longer in the kingdom of Jerusalem.  How much power Melisende should have was debated,   Melisende was not a bad co-ruler—she could not lead troops but she could use persuasion to try to keep great lords and the new military orders working together—not a bad skill.

          Baldwin III and then his brother Amalric were successful leaders, though they had little organanised crusading support from Europe after the fiasco of the Second Crusade.  Historians, using hindsight, blame them for becoming too involved in profitable raids against the declining Fatimid dynasty in Egypt at a time when the Zengids in the north were becoming the more formidiable foe.  After Almaricus suddenly died in 1173, his heir was his son Baldwin IV (1173-1185) .  Balbwin IV's tutor had been William of Tyre, the crusader state historian, who describes him as "talented," but notes that even before his accession there were places on Baldwin's arm where he could feel no pain.  Baldwin had leprosy! He was crowned at age 13, and in his minority there were two successive regents.  But regencies are always transitory, and since Baldwin was not expected to live long or produce an heir himself, everyone in the court was jockeying for position. Nevertheless King Baldwin IV--despite his declining health and a pushy mother--was not completely ineffective during his 14 years of rule—he even won a big battle against Saladin at Montisard.

          Two half sisters, Isabelle and Sibylla, who had been raised in separate courts in Bethany and Nablus, were the potential heirs, and in theory one of them could have been married to a powerful European groom who might rescue the Kingdom.  But it was hard to lure another great European nobleman like Count Fulk out to the Crusader States because the political situation looked so dangerous. The best the High Court could manage was William of Montferrat, first cousin of Louis VII and of Frederick I, but an old man.  He married Sibylla, got her pregnant with the future Baldwin V, and then soon died.  Baldwin IV approved BaldwinV as his successor, but this heir would die  as a six year-old child, only outliving Baldwin IV by about a year.  Baldwin IV had reluctantly agreed to the marriage of Sybilla to an exiled French nobleman, Guy of Lusignan, in 1180, and thereafter Guy was often regent.  He would become the king in 1185, through his marriage to Sibilla, and he would be the ruler at the time of the Battle of Hattin and the fall of Jerusalem in 1187.