Kingdom of Cyprus

Also known as Lusignan Cyprus, Regnum Cypri

The Lusignan island kingdom founded by Richard the Lionheart's sale of conquered Cyprus to Guy of Lusignan in 1192 — the longest-lasting Crusader state of all.

Cyprus passed into Frankish hands when Richard I of England seized the island during his 1191 detour on the way to the Third Crusade, in retaliation for the rough treatment of his shipwrecked sister and bride-to-be by the local ruler Isaac Komnenos. Richard sold it first to the Knights Templar (who returned it after a year of unprofitable rule) and then in 1192 to Guy of Lusignan, the deposed king of Jerusalem, as compensation for the mainland throne he had lost.

Guy's brother Aimery established the kingdom in the formal sense — he was crowned king in 1197 and codified its law in the Livre au roi around 1200. The kingdom was governed from Nicosia and its institutions closely paralleled those of the mainland Kingdom of Jerusalem, with which the Lusignans repeatedly held both crowns in personal union. From 1228 to 1243 the island was the principal battleground of the War of the Lombards, the constitutional struggle between the imperial party and the Ibelin-led baronial party that produced the Assises de Jérusalem.

After the fall of Acre in 1291 Cyprus became the last redoubt of the Latin East. The Lusignans ruled it for almost three centuries, building a remarkable Gothic culture at Nicosia and Famagusta. The kingdom was inherited by Catherine Cornaro, a Venetian, who was forced to cede it to the Republic of Venice in 1489 — ending Lusignan rule but extending Latin rule for another eighty-two years until the Ottoman conquest of 1571.

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