Then in 1186, the boy King Baldwin V, who had succeeded the ‘Leper’ King Baldwin IV, died without a direct heir. The barons of Jerusalem had earlier sworn to seek the advice of the kings of England and France, the Holy Roman Emperor and the pope regarding a successor, but the Western rulers were far away. Furthermore, Isabella’s half-sister, the mother of Baldwin V and sister of Baldwin IV, felt she ought to succeed to the throne. While most acknowledged she had a legitimate claim, the majority of barons and bishops abhorred her husband, Guy de Lusignan, and resisted crowning her. Sibylla consequently organised a coup. Without the consent of the High Court of Jerusalem but with the help of the Templars and Reynald de Châtillon, she contrived to have herself crowned and anointed in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. After she was anointed, she crowned Guy as her consort over the opposition of the patriarch, who refused to crown him.

Most of the barons and bishops were not in Jerusalem to witness Sibylla’s usurpation of the throne; they were meeting in Nablus to discuss options. The news that Sibylla had seized the throne and crowned her detested husband pushed them to act. It was agreed that Isabella, the other surviving child of King Amalric, should be crowned in Bethlehem as the legitimate queen. Isabella offered an ideal alternative to the usurpers because, as the child of Amalric’s second marriage, she was not tainted with illegitimacy. Furthermore, she had been born after he was crowned and anointed, an essential point in mediaeval inheritance law. Her husband would, naturally, become king consort at her side.

The barons had not reckoned with Humphrey de Toron. Either from fear or simply because he remained abjectly loyal to his stepfather, Châtillon, Humphrey slipped away during the night to go to Jerusalem where he did homage to Sibylla and Guy. Without an alternative rallying point, the baronial resistance to Sibylla and Guy’s coup d’état collapsed.

While these facts are recorded in history, how Isabella felt is not. Did Isabella side with her husband – and the man who had imprisoned her for three years? Or did she side with her mother and stepfather, who both vehemently opposed Sibylla and sought to put her on the throne? Did 14-year-old Isabella want to be queen? We have no way of knowing. Yet just because the historical record is silent, we should not assume she did not care. Like most barons, including her stepfather, Isabella accepted what Humphrey had done and made peace with Sibylla and Guy, but she may nevertheless have resented what happened intensely. It might well have created marital tensions.

Less than a year after usurping the crown, Guy de Lusignan led the army of Jerusalem to an unnecessary and devastating defeat. Not only was the battle lost, but thousands of fighting men were slaughtered, and the bulk of the remainder were enslaved. Most of the barons of Jerusalem were taken captive; among them was Isabella’s husband, Humphrey.

Saladin offered to release Humphrey in exchange for the surrender of the critically important Frankish border fortresses of Transjordan (which Humphrey had inherited after Saladin personally decapitated Reynald de Châtillon). According to some (romanticised) versions, Humphrey arrived home, only to have the garrisons refuse to obey his orders, at which point he voluntarily (or at his mother’s urgings) returned to Saracen captivity. It is more probable that Humphrey’s release was contingent on Kerak and Montreal being handed over to Saladin first. Since this never occurred, there was no chivalrous return to the dungeon from freedom. Both castles, however, were eventually reduced by siege, and, at that point, Saladin agreed to release Humphrey as he served no useful purpose in prison.

Humphrey and Isabella were reunited in early 1189 after roughly eighteen months of separation. Isabella’s location between the catastrophe of Hattin and her reunion with Humphrey is unrecorded. Most probably, she was with her mother and stepfather since her stepfather was one of only three barons to have fought his way off the field of Hattin. With King Guy and most of the High Court in captivity, Ibelin was unquestionably one of the most important men in the entire kingdom (Arab chronicles from the period refer to him as ‘like a king’). Furthermore, he commanded the respect of those fighting men who escaped capture with him. It would, therefore, have been logical for Isabella to seek his protection in this period.

Ibelin was in Tyre, the only city in the kingdom that did not fall or surrender to Saladin in the wake of Hattin. Also in Tyre at this time was Conrad de Montferrat, the brother of Queen Sibylla’s first husband. Conrad was a man of high birth and good connections. More importantly, he had taken command of the defence of Tyre at a critical moment and enjoyed the support of the people, both residents and refugees. If Isabella were in Tyre, she and Conrad would have met and probably known each other well.

When Humphrey returned from captivity, however, he joined not the men who had successfully defended what was left of the kingdom but the architect of the disaster, Guy de Lusignan. Thus, when Guy de Lusignan foolishly decided to besiege Saracen-held Acre, Humphrey went with him. Isabella accompanied him to Acre, but we cannot know if she did so willingly.

A siege camp is not a pleasant place for anyone, much less a high-born lady, which begs the question: why would Isabella choose to expose herself to the filth, privations, confinement and mortal hazards of a siege? Was it love for her husband? The passionate desire not to be separated from him again after eighteen months of forced separation caused by his captivity? Or did she go at the insistence of her half-sister Sibylla, who was also at the siege with her two infant daughters and commanded the attendance of her little sister? Did Humphrey insist on Isabella coming with him because he was jealous of a budding friendship between his wife and Conrad de Montferrat? Any of these motives are plausible, but we will never know the truth.

The only thing that is certain is that Isabella was still there in November of 1190 when her half-sister Sibylla and her two nieces died of fever. In the eyes of the High Court, which had favoured her since the constitutional crisis of 1186, Isabella was the heir presumptive to the crown and, as such, the preferred candidate for the next ruler of Jerusalem.

In the middle of a November night, Isabella was dragged from the tent and bed she shared with Humphrey and taken into the custody of the leading prelates of the Church present at the siege of Acre. Among these were the Papal Legate, the Archbishop of Pisa; Philip, the Bishop of Beauvais; and Baldwin, the Archbishop of Canterbury, along with two other unnamed bishops. She was informed that an ecclesiastic inquiry would be conducted on the validity of her marriage to Humphrey de Toron.

At this point, Isabella had been living under the same roof as Humphrey for fourteen years and had been married to him for eleven. Although she had no children and the marriage had possibly never been consummated, she nevertheless viewed herself as legally married. All accounts agree that she objected to being taken from Humphrey and resisted the efforts to annul her marriage because she loved him.

All accounts also agree that during the proceedings, Isabella’s attitude changed. Clerics in the service of the English king and bitterly hostile to her second husband attribute her change of heart to the misogynous thesis that ‘a girl can easily be taught to do what is morally wrong’ and that ‘a woman’s opinion changes very easily’.122 More neutral contemporary accounts attribute her change of heart to her mother’s influence.

[Maria Comnena] remonstrated … that she [Isabella] could not become the lady of the kingdom unless she left Humphrey. [The queen mother] reminded [her daughter] of the evil deed that [Humphrey] had done, for when the count of Tripoli and the other barons who were at Nablus wanted to crown him king and her queen, he had fled to Jerusalem and, begging forgiveness, had done homage to Queen Sibylla … So long as Isabella was his wife she could have neither honour nor her father’s kingdom, Moreover … when she [Isabella] married she was still under age and for that reason the validity of her marriage could be challenged.123

The dowager queen’s arguments are enlightening. The Constitution of Jerusalem required a reigning queen to have a consort, and Isabella was married to a man who had betrayed the High Court of Jerusalem in 1186. The High Court of Jerusalem was unprepared to do homage to the man who had betrayed them.

Unstated because it was obvious to all involved in this incident: the Kingdom of Jerusalem had been reduced to the single city of Tyre following the disastrous Battle of Hattin, and the desperate bid to recapture the city of Acre had bogged down into a war of attrition with the besiegers surrounded by the army of Saladin. Jerusalem needed a legitimate queen and a king capable of leading the fight to recover the lost kingdom. Isabella’s husband, Humphrey de Toron, was patently not that man. Thus, regardless of Isabella’s impeccable claim to the throne, the High Court (which consisted of the barons and bishops of the kingdom) was not prepared to recognise her as queen unless and until she set aside Humphrey de Toron and took another husband more suitable to the High Court.

The High Court, it will be remembered, had taken the same stance with both her father and elder sister, compelling her father to set aside his first wife Agnes de Courtenay and demanding that her sister divorce Guy de Lusignan. Her father apparently willingly complied with the demands of the High Court, while Sibylla agreed to divorce Guy only on the condition that she be allowed to choose her next husband. However, after she had been crowned and anointed queen, she had blithely announced that she chose none other than Guy de Lusignan as her new husband. In short, she reneged on her promise to put him aside. This incident was very much on the minds of the barons when they faced a similar situation in 1190. They were determined not to repeat their mistake of four years earlier. Isabella had to be legally separated from Humphrey before the High Court would acknowledge her as queen.

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, upheld the sanctity of marriage. Isabella’s marriage to Humphrey could not simply be invalidated. There had to be a reason for annulling it, and this, too, is stated explicitly in the argument put forth by her mother: she had not yet attained the legal age of consent at the time of her marriage. This objective fact was both indisputable and not subject to Isabella’s whim. Whether she liked it or not, she was not legally married in the eyes of the Church. Five prelates, including a papal legate, ruled her marriage to Humphrey invalid.

Most accounts of Isabella’s divorce in history and literature latch onto the fact that she initially resisted the divorce ‘out of love for Humphrey’ and that her mother ‘remonstrated with’ (i.e., bullied) her as evidence that Isabella was again only a pawn in the hands of the powerful people around her. They ignore the fact that Isabella changed her testimony, admitting she had not consented to the marriage with Humphrey. Then, once the marriage to Humphrey was dissolved, she married Conrad Marquis of Montferrat within a week. In short, she did not follow her sister’s example of remarrying her first husband. This is an important point. Although her marriage to Humphrey as a child was not valid because she had been below the canonical age of consent, she could have married Humphrey as a consenting adult in 1190 had she wanted to. That she did not says one thing: Isabella preferred to wear the (at that point almost worthless) crown of Jerusalem over marriage to the man she reputedly loved.

So maybe she did not love Humphrey all that much? Or maybe she was more ambitious than people give her credit for? Either way, she made a choice.

Her second husband, Conrad de Montferrat, was a man with a formidable reputation at arms. He had almost single-handedly saved Tyre from surrender to Saladin in July 1187 and defended it a second time in December of that same year. Before that, he had charmed the court in Constantinople with his good looks, manners and education. He was twice Isabella’s age at the time of their marriage.

Isabella would have had no illusions about why Conrad was marrying her – it was for the throne of Jerusalem. As a royal princess, that would neither have surprised nor offended her. Isabella and Conrad, one can argue, chose one another because together they offered the Kingdom of Jerusalem the best means of avoiding obliteration. The legitimacy of Isabella and the military prowess of Conrad gave the barons and people of Jerusalem a rallying point around which to build a comeback. Notably, Isabella called on her barons to do homage to her immediately after her marriage to Montferrat; that is the act of a woman determined to establish her position and remind her vassals of it.

Unfortunately for both Isabella and Conrad, the king of England, either out of feudal loyalty or sheer petulant hostility to his rival, the king of France (who was related to and backed Conrad), chose to uphold the claim of Sibylla’s widowed husband Guy de Lusignan to the throne of Jerusalem. What this meant for Isabella was that, despite her marriage to the man preferred by the High Court, she was not recognised or afforded the dignities of a queen because the powerful king of England (who rapidly seized command of what we know as the Third Crusade) opposed her husband. Conrad responded by refusing to support Richard and by seeking a separate peace with Saladin. This can only have been an incredibly frustrating experience for Isabella, but she would have been cheered when she, at last, became pregnant in early 1192.

In April 1192, the English king finally relented, and word reached Tyre that he was prepared to recognise Isabella and Conrad as queen and king consort of Jerusalem. The people of Tyre, fiercely loyal to Conrad since he’d saved them from Saladin, rejoiced rapturously. In a dramatic gesture, Conrad asked God to strike him down if he did not deserve the honour of the crown of the Holy City. He then walked out into the streets to be stabbed by two assassins.Mortally wounded, he was carried to his residence, where he died in agony in Isabella’s arms. She was not yet 20 years old.

Isabella was, however, still the last surviving direct descendent of the kings of Jerusalem, and her kingdom had never needed her more. The king of England had already received news of his brother’s rebellion and was anxious to return to the West. The precarious gains of the Third Crusade needed defending. Isabella had to remarry, and she had to remarry a man acceptable to the High Court and the king of England. But Isabella was an adult and a widow to whom the barons had already sworn homage. They could not force her into a new marriage. That Isabella remarried within eight days is not evidence of her powerlessness but demonstrates her sense of responsibility to her kingdom.

Furthermore, her choice shows exceptional intelligence and an understanding of the precarious balance of power among the crusaders fighting to restore her kingdom. She chose the nephew of the kings of England and France, a grandson of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henri, Count of Champagne. The count had been one of the first to take the cross and come out to Outremer to fight for the recovery of Isabella’s kingdom. He was only 26 years old and known as gallant and courteous. According to Itinerarium, far from being greedy for a crown, he was a reluctant candidate who was distressed by Isabella’s situation and only persuaded to consent when she assured him that it was indeed her wish. Certainly, he never styled himself as king of Jerusalem, preferring the title to which he had been born.

In the five years of her marriage to Champagne, Isabella gave birth to a posthumous daughter by Montferrat, Maria, and three daughters by Champagne, Marguerite, Alice and Philippa. During this marriage, a degree of stability descended over her kingdom with a three-year, eight-month truce with the Saracens signed 2–3 September 1192. Then on 10 September 1197, Henri fell backwards from a window to his death. The circumstances remain obscure. A balcony or window frame possibly gave way, or he simply lost his balance in a sudden turn.

Isabella was again a widow, and the truce with Saladin had expired. The kingdom was again in need of a king capable of leading armies in its defence. As in 1192, Isabella was an adult ruling queen who no one could force to remarry. Her barons had sworn homage to her five years earlier. She was in control of her fate, but also accepted her duty to her kingdom. Four months after Champagne’s death, Isabella married a fourth time, and again, her choice reflects her astute judge of character and uncanny understanding of power politics. She married a man with years of experience fighting in the Holy Land, strong credentials as a good administrator and popular with his peers. She chose her former brother-in-law, Aimery de Lusignan. They were crowned jointly as king and queen of Jerusalem in Acre in January 1198.

Their first child, Sibylla, was born the same year as their marriage (1198) and a second daughter, Melisende, followed two years later. Their son, named Aimery for his father, was born last but died first, in February 1205. Two months later, on 1 April 1205, King Aimery died of food poisoning; he would have been between 55 and 60 years of age. Isabella died shortly afterwards, likely shattered by the loss of her only son and her fourth husband in such quick succession. She was 33 years old.

Four of her daughters survived her. The eldest, Maria de Montferrat, the posthumous daughter of Conrad de Montferrat, was 13 years old and succeeded to the crown of Jerusalem. Isabella’s eldest surviving daughter by Champagne, Alice, married Aimery de Lusignan’s eldest son by his first marriage, Hugh I, king of Cyprus. Her eldest daughter by Aimery de Lusignan married Leo I, king of Armenia. Her youngest daughter Melisende married Bohemund IV, Prince of Antioch.

Isabella’s life was short by modern standards and filled with drama: forced separation from her family at age 8, her dramatic divorce in the siege camp of Acre, the assassination of one husband, and the death of two more. Yet, there is no available evidence that she saw herself as a victim or pawn. Instead, she rose to her destiny and fulfilled it as best she could – every inch a queen.

Isabella II (Yolanda), Ruling Queen of Jerusalem (b. 1212 – d. 1228, reigned (legally, if not in fact) 1212–1228)

If any queen of Jerusalem was powerless, it was Isabella II, more commonly known as Yolanda. She was a queen almost from birth, yet never exercised the power of a monarch. Not only was she a pawn of emperors, kings and popes engaged in struggles beyond the scope of her kingdom, but she was also largely neglected as a child and abused as a bride. Her fate stands out as the exception to the rule of empowered women in Outremer.

Yolanda became queen of Jerusalem within days of her birth in November 1212. Her mother, Maria de Montferrat, through whom she derived her title, had died at the age of 20 from complications stemming from Yolanda’s birth.

Yolanda was, thus, a half-orphan from birth, and her father, John de Brienne, was a parvenu newcomer to her kingdom. Immediately, voices were raised questioning her father’s right to remain king. Powerful voices argued that her closest adult relative on her mother’s side – the side from which she derived her title – should exercise the regency during her minority. John de Brienne rallied sufficient support for his claim to be regent for his infant daughter to retain his crown, but his position was precarious.

Less than two years after the death of Yolanda’s mother, John de Brienne married a second time, this time the Armenian Princess Stephanie. Yolanda would still have been a toddler, mainly in the care of nannies, and Stephanie might well have acted as a surrogate mother to her. Perhaps for the next six years, Yolanda had what we would consider security and happiness surrounded by her father, stepmother and soon, a baby half-brother.

If it ever existed, that idyll was shattered when Stephanie and her son died in early 1220. Furthermore, they died at a time when the bulk of the fighting men were away in Egypt, taking part in the Fifth Crusade, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was under attack by the sultan of Damascus. Caesarea had been captured and sacked, and other cities seemed likely to succumb to the same fate. Yolanda’s father John de Brienne abandoned the Fifth Crusade and rushed home to defend the Kingdom of Jerusalem with the bulk of the Syrian barons and the Knights Templar. Yolanda would have been 7 years old – old enough to feel the pain of losing the only mother she had ever known and her little brother and old enough to sense the fear and alarm that had brought her father back from campaigning in Egypt.

Any joy she felt at seeing her father again was short-lived. John returned to Egypt and the Fifth Crusade, where his advice to trade Damietta (held by the crusaders) for Jerusalem (held by the Ayyubids) was ignored. Instead, the crusade made the fatal mistake of trying to march on Cairo and ended in a debacle. John himself had to stand hostage for the implementation of the negotiated settlement.

Eventually, John returned home to his now 8-year-old daughter, but not for long. In early 1221, he set off on a grand tour of the West, intended to raise money and troops for a new crusade. He would never again set foot in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Instead, he traversed Europe, traveling as far north as England and Cologne but spending more time in Italy and Spain. During these travels, he secured his third wife, Berengaria of Castile, and negotiated the fateful marriage of Yolanda to the Holy Roman Emperor.

And Yolanda? Just 9 years old when her father departed, she was not yet 13 when she married Frederick II by proxy in Acre. The historical record tells us nothing about her activities during this time; we can only assume she was undergoing the kind of education thought suitable for queens in this period. Most likely, that education was entrusted to one of the convents that traditionally took daughters of the higher nobility into their ranks as pupils, nuns and abbesses.

The quality of such an education should not be underestimated. Convents had a long tradition of being centres of learning and, in the early thirteenth century, were still home to intellectual inquiry and debate. At a minimum, Yolanda learned to read and write in French and Latin. She may also have studied Greek, given how widespread the language was in the Holy Land and the existence of many religious texts still available in the original Greek. She would have been expected to know Christian dogma and theology, which entailed reading the Bible and other religious texts. She would have had a command of arithmetic, though not necessarily geometry or algebra. Yolanda would also have studied the history of her kingdom and its most important supporters, such as the Holy Roman Empire, France and England. She would probably have been educated about the kingdom’s enemies, possibly including some knowledge of Arabic. (Many of Jerusalem’s nobles were fluent in Arabic, and it was the native tongue of a substantial minority of the population, both Christian and Muslim.) Some knowledge of the natural sciences, particularly human biology and fundamental methods for treating common illnesses and injuries, might also have been included in the curricula. Mandatory studies would have included etiquette, protocol, spinning and needlework.

Yolanda’s education would hardly have been considered complete, however, when envoys from the Holy Roman Emperor arrived in Acre with the news that her father had negotiated her marriage to the most powerful monarch on earth, a man already calling himself ‘the Wonder of the World’. The wedding followed almost immediately. Still only 12 years old, Yolanda was married by proxy to Frederick in Acre and crowned queen in Tyre before setting sail with a large escort of prelates and noblemen for Apulia. She arrived at Brindisi and married Frederick II on 9 November 1225; it was just days before or after her thirteenth birthday. Her bridegroom was a 30-year-old widower who maintained a harem in the Sicilian tradition.

The marriage got off to a terrible start. John de Brienne had negotiated the marriage with either implicit or explicit assurances from the emperor that John would remain king of Jerusalem until his death. He saw the marriage of his daughter to the Holy Roman Emperor as a means of securing aid in the form of cash and troops to defend his kingdom. Frederick Hohenstaufen, however, declared himself king of Jerusalem the day after the wedding and insisted the barons who had escorted Yolanda to Italy swear fealty to him at once.

John de Brienne was outraged, and so was the Master of the Teutonic Knights, Herman von Salza, who had been instrumental in the negotiations. The latter’s indignation strongly suggests that Brienne had not simply been deluding himself. It appears that Frederick had intentionally misled Brienne about his intentions or had lied outright. In any case, Frederick instantly made an enemy of his father-in-law, and the breach ensured that Yolanda never saw her father again.

Perhaps, given how often he had been away during her short life, Yolanda did not miss him, but she found no comfort or companionship from her husband either. Although it is hard to distinguish facts from propaganda, the tales of Yolanda’s marriage are unremittingly negative. The horror stories start with one contemporary chronicle that claims Frederick scorned his bride on the wedding night to seduce one of her ladies instead. Several sources agree that ‘soon after the marriage, Frederick imprisoned, or otherwise maltreated, his wife’.124

Within six months, Yolanda’s father was openly at war with her husband by supporting the ever-rebellious Lombard League. Allegedly, the frustrated emperor took out his rage on his 13-year-old bride, beating her so brutally that she miscarried the child she was carrying, according to the Chronicle of Ernoul. Whether her husband’s abuse was the cause, Yolanda miscarried a child at about this time; she would have been at most 14 years of age.

Meanwhile, Frederick was under increasing pressure to fulfil his repeated promises to go to the aid of the Holy Land. He had first taken crusading vows in 1215 and eleven years later had nothing but excuses to show for it. During the negotiations for his marriage to Yolanda, he had promised to set out on crusade no later than August 1227 or face excommunication. In the summer of 1227, a great army was assembled in Apulia with the goal of liberating Jerusalem from Muslim control, but before the crusaders could embark, they were devastated by a contagious disease that killed thousands. Frederick boarded a vessel but was so ill that his companions urged him to turn back. Frederick put about and landed not in the Holy Land but in Sicily. The pope promptly excommunicated him.

And Yolanda? She remained imprisoned in Frederick’s harem. He had not even thought to take her with him when he set off for her kingdom. She was also soon pregnant again.

On 5 May 1228, ten days after delivering a son, Yolanda of Jerusalem died. She was not yet 16. Although she had been a queen almost from the day of her birth, not once had she exercised the authority to which she had been born.