Melisende of Lusignan

Melisende of Cyprus (c. 1200 - c. 1249) was a princess of the House of Lusignan. She was a daughter of Queen Isabella I of Jerusalem and King Aimery of Cyprus and wife of Prince Bohemond IV of Antioch. She claimed the regency of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1246 as the closest relative of King Conrad II, but it was awarded to her nephew King Henry I of Cyprus instead.

Youth

Melisende was born around 1200. ^[1] She was the youngest daughter of Queen Isabella I of Jerusalem. Her father was King Aimery of Cyprus. Aimery was Isabella's fourth husband; she his second wife. ^[2] While Aimery's children from his first marriage carried Lusignan names, those born to him and Isabella were named after their maternal relatives; Melisende was named after her mother's grandmother Queen Melisende of Jerusalem. Because their mother already had four daughters from her previous marriages, Melisende and her sister, Sibylla, had little chance of inheriting the crown of Jerusalem. ^[3] Aimery and Isabella both died in 1205. The Kingdom of Jerusalem passed to Maria of Montferrat, Melisende's half-sister and the eldest of Isabella's five surviving daughters, while the Kingdom of Cyprus was inherited by Hugh I, Aimery's son from his first marriage. ^[4] Melisende and Sibylla came under the guardianship of their half-brother Hugh. ^[5]

King Hugh initially supported the Armenians in the War of the Antiochene Succession, arranging in 1210 for his sister Helvis to marry the Armenian claimant, Raymond-Roupen, and half-sister Sibylla to marry Raymond-Roupen's granduncle King Leo I of Armenia. When Raymond-Roupen's fortunes declined in his struggle with his uncle Bohemond IV over the Principality of Antioch, Hugh changed sides and gave Melisende in marriage to the recently widowed Bohemond. ^[6] The wedding was held in January 1218 in Tripoli, where Bohemond ruled as count, and attended by King Andrew II of Hungary, who had come with the Fifth Crusade. Hugh fell ill and died during the celebrations. ^[7]

Bohemond took control of Antioch in 1219. ^[8] Around 1220, Melisende gave birth to their daughter, Maria. ^[1] Like other 13th-century princesses of Antioch, Melisende had little influence; neither she nor Bohemond's first wife, Plaisance of Gibelet, are mentioned in the charters Bohemond issued as prince of Antioch. ^[9] Bohemond died in March 1233. ^[10]

Claimant

In 1243 Melisende's half-sister Alice of Champagne, by then the oldest surviving daughter of their mother, Isabella, became regent of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the name of King Conrad II, the grandson of Alice and Melisende's half-sister Maria. Conrad lived in Europe, and Alice was declared regent by the High Court of Jerusalem because she was the king's closest relative who lived in the Latin East. ^[11] When Alice died in 1246, both Melisende and Henry I of Cyprus, Alice's son, claimed the regency. ^{[12] [13]} Although Melisende was more closely related to Conrad than her nephew was, the High Court awarded the regency to Henry. No account of how this came to pass survives, but it is likely that he was more desirable because he was a man and a crowned ruler in his own right; there are also signs that he outbidded Melisende by granting land to the members of the High Court. ^[14]

Melisende died around 1249. ^[1] After the extinction of Maria of Montferrat's line in 1269, Melisende's daughter, Maria of Antioch, unsuccessfully claimed the throne of Jerusalem. ^[6]

Melisende's relationship with the ruling houses of Jerusalem, Cyprus, Antioch, and Armenia [15]
Stephen of Armenia Bohemond III of Antioch Roupen III of Armenia Aimery of Cyprus Isabella I of Jerusalem Alice of Armenia Raymond IV of Tripoli Raymond-Roupen of Antioch Helvis of Cyprus Maria of Jerusalem Hugh I of Cyprus Alice of Champagne Sibylla of Cyprus Leo I of Armenia Melisende of Cyprus Bohemond IV of Antioch Isabella II of Jerusalem Henry I of Cyprus Conrad II of Jerusalem

References

Citations

1. Baldwin 2014, Claimants to the Thrones of Jerusalem and Cyprus.
2. Runciman 1989, p. Appendix III.
3. Donnachie 2021, p. 188.
4. Hamilton 2016, p. 226.
5. Hamilton 1997, p. 18.
6. Lippiatt 2025, p. 171.
7. Hamilton 2016, p. 229.
8. Runciman 1989, p. 172.
9. Buck 2020, p. 110.
10. Runciman 1989, p. 206.
11. Hamilton 2016, p. 237.
12. Hamilton 2016, p. 238.
13. Runciman 1989, pp. 223, 230.
14. Edbury 1991, p. 82.
15. Runciman 1989, Appendix III: Genealogical trees (4, 1).

Bibliography

• Baldwin, Philip Bruce (2014). Pope Gregory X and the Crusades. Boydell and Brewer Ltd. ISBN   978-1843839163.
• Buck, Andrew D. (2020). "Women in the principality of Antioch: power, status, and social agency". Haskins Society Journal. 31: 95–132. ISSN   0963-4959.
• Donnachie, Stephen (27 May 2021). "The predicaments of Aimery de Lusignan". Settlement and Crusade in the Thirteenth Century. London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429203886-15. ISBN   978-0-429-20388-6.
• Edbury, Peter W. (1991). The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0-521-45837-5 . Retrieved 24 August 2025.
• Hamilton, Bernard (1997). "King Consorts of Jerusalem and their Entourages from the West". In Mayer, Hans E. (ed.). Die Kreuzfahrerstaaten als multikulturelle Gesellschaft. De Gruyter Brill. pp. 13–24.
• Hamilton, Bernard (2016). "Queen Alice of Cyprus". In Boas, Adrian J. (ed.). The Crusader World. The Routledge Worlds. The University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 225–240. ISBN   978-0-415-82494-1.
• Lippiatt, G. E. M. (11 August 2025). "Transregnal Lordship in Three Crusading Families". In Peltzer, Jörg; Vincent, Nicholas (eds.). Transregnal Kingship in the Thirteenth Century: Jörg Peltzer and Nicholas Vincent. Liverpool University Press. ISBN   978-1-83624-948-1 . Retrieved 24 August 2025.
• Runciman, Steven (1989). A History of the Crusades. Vol. 3: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades. Cambridge University Press.