John of Brienne

Also known as the soldier-king

A landless younger son of the Champagne nobility whose reputation was made entirely on the tournament circuit and the battlefields of the Fourth Crusade, John of Brienne was sixty when Philip II of France sent him east to marry the thirteen-year-old Maria of Montferrat and inherit her kingdom. His contemporaries were surprised; his choice proved sound. He arrived in Acre in 1210 and held the throne, first as king-consort and after 1212 as regent for his infant daughter, for fifteen years.

In the Fifth Crusade (1217–1221) he commanded the Frankish and papal field armies in Egypt and captured Damietta in 1219 after a year-long siege. Sultan al-Kamil twice offered to swap the city for Jerusalem; the papal legate Pelagius refused both times over John's furious objection, and the crusade disintegrated in the Nile floods of 1221. John was the first King of Jerusalem to tour Europe in search of aid, visiting Rome, Paris, London and the court of Alfonso IX of León between 1222 and 1225.

In San Germano in August 1225 he married his daughter Isabella II to the Emperor Frederick II on papal assurances that his own title would be respected. Frederick immediately claimed the Kingdom of Jerusalem as his own and exiled his father-in-law. John went on to an improbable second career as Latin Emperor of Constantinople, dying in 1237 after a successful defence of the capital against the Bulgarians. Historians treat him as the last capable crusader king of Jerusalem — and the last to lose his throne to a son-in-law's signature on a marriage contract.

Preceded by Isabella I. Succeeded by Frederick II.

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