ABSTRACT
The European polities founded in the Levant in the wake of the First Crusade (1095–9), commonly known as the Crusader States, were remote islands of Latin Christian civilization surrounded by a wider Islamic world. Conflict with their Muslim neighbours was a consistent feature of these states’ existence, which demanded the leadership of capable rulers experienced in military affairs to maintain their security. However, the dynasties founded in the Latin East by the first generation of crusaders consistently failed in the male line, as men fell as casualties in the recurrent warfare, or through accident of birth, where only daughters were born or survived into adulthood. Consequently, these realms witnessed the repeated succession of women to the highest positions of political power. 1 Across the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, succession to two of these states, the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem and the principality of Antioch, regularly fell to heiresses. While the hereditary principles on which these women succeeded their male kin were acknowledged in both law and custom, the dominant patriarchal paradigms of medieval society were hard pressed to view these women as independent rulers in their own right, but rather characterized them as transmitters of legitimacy to their husbands or sons. 2 An heiress could act as a vessel to transfer royal authority, but she could not reign alone when the threat of conflict required a monarch to take an active military leadership role. The need for skilled commanders in the Latin East was paramount, but such overtly masculine activities lay outside of a queen’s traditional duties, and the chronicler William of Tyre lamented the death of the prince of Antioch in 1149 and the capture of the count of Edessa in 1150, because their lands were abandoned to feminine rule. 3 Suitable husbands had to be found for these heiresses, and the barons of Jerusalem and Antioch repeatedly turned to their co-religionists in the Latin West to provide them with the men they needed. The Crusader States, therefore, were frequently ruled by male consorts who reigned as monarchs through the merit of their marriages (Figure 31.1). However, how these men exercised their royal authority as consorts, and the challenges it presented to their kingship, have not been suitably examined.
