Guy of Lusignan

Guy of Lusignan (died 1194) was a French knight who, through marriage, became king of Jerusalem, and led the Kingdom to disaster at the Battle of Hattin in 1187.

Arrival in Jerusalem

Guy was a brother of Hugh IX, Count of Lusignan. Along with another brother, Amalric, Guy went to Jerusalem in the 1170s, where he became a client of Agnes of Courtenay, mother of King Baldwin IV. Agnes was concerned that her political rivals, headed by the regent Raymond III of Tripoli, were determined to exercise more control by forcing Agnes' daughter, the princess Sibylla, to marry someone of their choosing. Agnes foiled these plans by advising her son to have Sibylla married to Guy. To this he agreed, and Guy married into the royal family in 1180. By his marriage he also became count of Jaffa and Ascalon and bailiff of Jerusalem.

An ambitious man, Guy convinced Baldwin IV to name him regent in early 1182, much to the displeasure of the Haute Cour. However, Guy's behavior as regent soon outraged the court. Many native born Frankish settlers (the descendants of the original crusaders), wanted to make peace with Saladin, sultan of Egypt, having become weary of the constant warfare and threats on their borders. But Guy and Raynald of Chatillon, and other newly-arrived crusaders, were there to fight. Guy's continuous provocations against Saladin threatened any peace between Jerusalem and Egypt.

Agnes herself was displeased at Guy's disgrace, and refused to come to his defense. Throughout late 1182 and early 1183 Baldwin IV tried to have his sister's marriage to Guy annulled, showing that Baldwin still held his sister with some favour. Sibylla was held up in Ascalon, though perhaps not against her will. Unsuccessful in prying his sister and heir away from Guy, the king and the Haute Cour altered the succession, placing Baldwin V, Sibylla's son from her first marriage to William of Montferrat, in precedence over Sibylla, though she was not herself excluded from the succession. Guy kept a low profile from 1183 until his wife became queen in 1186.

King-Consort of Jerusalem

When Baldwin IV finally succumbed to his leprosy in 1185, Baldwin V became king, but he was a sickly child and died within a year. Guy went with Sibylla to Jerusalem for his step-son's funeral in 1186, along with an armed escort, with which he garrisoned the city. Raymond III, who was jealous to protect his own influence and his new political ally, the dowager queen Maria Comnena, was making arrangements to summon the Haute Cour when Sibylla was crowned queen by Patriarch Heraclius. Raynald of Chatillon gained popular support for Sibylla by affirming that she was "li plus apareissanz et plus dreis heis dou rouame". With the clear support of the church Sibylla was undisputed sovereign.

Sibylla was crowned alone, as sole queen. As Bernard Hamilton writes, "there is no real doubt, following the precedent of Melisende, that Sibylla, as the elder daughter of King Amalric, had the best claim to the throne; equally, there could be no doubt after the ceremony that Guy only held the crown matrimonial."

However, before she was crowned she agreed with oppositional court members that she would annul her marriage with Guy to please them, as long as she would be given free choice in her next husband. The leaders of the Haute Cour agreed, and Sibylla was crowned thereafter. Taking her choice as husband, to the astonishment of the rival court faction, she remarried Guy. The queen removed the crown from her head and handed it to Guy, permitting him to crown himself. Humphrey IV of Toron, husband of Sibylla's half-sister Isabella, was Raymond III and the Ibelins' choice for the kingship, but his claim was weak, and he disassociated himself from them, swearing fealty instead to Sibylla. Humphrey would become one of Guy's closest allies in the kingdom.

Fall of Jerusalem

Immediately the chief concern in the kingdom was checking Saladin's advance. In 1187 Guy attempted to relieve Saladin's siege of Tiberias, against the advice of Raymond III; Guy's army was surrounded and cut off from a supply of water, and on July 4 the army of Jerusalem was completely destroyed at the Battle of Hattin. Guy was one of the very few captives spared by the Saracens after the battle, along with his brother Geoffrey, Raynald, and Humphrey.

The exhausted captives were brought to Saladin's tent, where Guy was given a goblet of water as a sign of Saladin's generosity. When Guy offered the goblet to his fellow captive Raynald, Saladin knocked the goblet away. He then had Raynald executed. Guy was imprisoned in Damascus, while Sibylla remained behind to defend Jerusalem, which was handed over to Saladin on October 2. Sibylla wrote Saladin and begged for her husband's release, and Guy was finally granted release in 1188 and allowed to rejoin his wife. Guy and Sibylla sought refuge in Tyre, the only city remaining in Christian hands, thanks to the defense of Conrad of Montferrat.

Conrad denied sanctuary to Sibylla and Guy, who camped outside the city walls for months. Guy soon joined a vanguard of the newly arrived Third Crusade. The queen followed him but soon died of an epidemic, along with the daughters she had borne him. According to the surviving members of the Haute Cour, with Sibylla's death Guy lost the authority he held as king-consort, and the crown passed to Isabella.

King of Cyprus

In 1191, Guy left Acre with a small fleet and landed at Limassol. He was seeking support from Richard Lionheart, whose vassal he had previously been in France. He swore fealty to King Richard, and attended the marriage ceremony of Richard and Berengaria of Navarre. He participated in the campaign against Isaac Comnenus of Cyprus, and so impressed Richard that Guy became Richard's candidate for King of Jerusalem.

King Philip II of France supported instead Conrad of Montferrat, who was chosen king in 1192 by right of his wife Isabella; Conrad had had Isabella and Humphrey's marriage annulled and married her himself. Conrad was soon assassinated and Isabella married Henry II of Champagne; when he died in 1197, Isabella married Guy's brother Amalric. Meanwhile, Guy was compensated for the loss of his kingdom by purchasing Cyprus from Richard, who had conquered it en route to Palestine. Guy died in 1194, but descendants of the Lusignans continued to rule the Kingdom of Cyprus until 1474. He was buried at the Church of the Templars in Nicosia.

A largely fictionalized version of Guy is played by Marton Csokas in the 2005 movie Kingdom of Heaven.

Sources

• Medieval Women, edited by Derek Baker. Ecclesiastical History Society, 1979.
• Jackson, Guida. Women Who Ruled, 1998
• Payne, Robert. The Dream and the Tomb, 1984

A later Guy of Lusignan (died 1344) became Constantine IV of Armenia.