Conrad II

Also known as Conrad IV of Germany

Son of Frederick II and Isabella II, Conrad — known in German history as Conrad IV, in Jerusalem as Conrad II — became King of Jerusalem at eight days old, on his mother's death in childbirth in May 1228. He never set foot in Outremer. The kingdom was run in his name by a succession of regents and, after 1243, by the barons of the High Court themselves.

In 1243, on the grounds that the king had come of age but had failed to appear in person to receive the homage of his vassals, the High Court formally ended the regency of Frederick's representatives and elected Alice of Champagne — the long-exiled senior dowager — as regent in her own right. The kingdom was from that moment a feudal republic in all but name. The following year, in the weakest hour of this arrangement, the Khwarazmian horsemen hired by the Egyptian sultan as-Salih Ayyub sacked Jerusalem for good; the Holy City was never again in Frankish hands.

Conrad spent the 1240s and early 1250s fighting to hold his father's shattered inheritance in Germany and Italy. He died of fever at Lavello in southern Italy in May 1254, aged twenty-six, leaving a two-year-old son — Conradin — and a kingdom that, by now, he had never seen and never would.

Preceded by Frederick II. Succeeded by Conradin.

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