Henry II

Also known as the last crowned king

Henry II was the last crowned King of Jerusalem to rule on the mainland. He succeeded his brother John II in 1285, forced the Angevin garrison out of Acre in 1286, and on 15 August of that year was crowned in the cathedral of Tyre — the last coronation a King of Jerusalem would celebrate on Levantine soil. He was fourteen. He suffered from epilepsy throughout his reign.

When the Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Khalil moved against Acre in April 1291 with the largest siege army the Crusades had seen, Henry sailed from Cyprus with two hundred knights and a few thousand foot to join the defence. For six weeks, with the Templars, Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights and the remnants of his own household, he held the walls. When the Accursed Tower fell on 18 May and the city dissolved into street fighting, Henry was evacuated by galley to Cyprus — the act that, legally, ended the Kingdom of Jerusalem on the mainland.

From Cyprus he went on reigning as King of Jerusalem in title for thirty-three more years, petitioning Pope Clement V for a new crusade, attempting to impose a papal trade embargo on the Mamluks, and drafting careful plans for the reconquest that no one in Europe seriously intended to carry out. He died in Nicosia in 1324. He is the tragic figure of crusader historiography — the king who held the end.

Preceded by John II. No successor.

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