To be a medieval queen--both a blessing and a curse

November 24, 1190 was a date of a marriage that changed the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Guy de Lusignan’s queen, Sybilla, had died in October with their two young daughters; I am sentimental enough to hope that she was too ill to know that her children had died. Guy’s enemies were quick to argue that he had no claim to the crown in his own right, which had vested in Sybilla, now dead. They insisted that the throne should now pass to Sybilla’s half-sister, Isabella, but there was one huge stumbling block. She was wed to a man who was as suspect in the eyes of the Poulains as Guy himself was, Humphrey de Toron, whom I described in Lionheart as a man with the soul of a poet in a world of warriors. No one thought that Humphrey would make a good king, least of all Conrad of Montferrat, a swaggering adventurer who’d saved Tyre from falling to Saladin. Many thought Conrad would be a fine king, so a plan was set in motion to end Isabella’s marriage and then marry her off to Conrad despite the awkward fact that this marriage would be invalid under canon law. Humphey protested, of course, but he lost much sympathy when one of Conrad’s supporters challenged him to a duel and he refused to accept. His young wife was made of sterner stuff, though, and she balked, saying that she loved Humphrey and did not want to leave him. But history is filled with the sad stories of women forced to marry against their will. If even the Empress Maude could not withstand her father’s demand that she wed Geoffrey of Anjou, an eighteen year old girl had little chance of prevailing, not when her own mother urged her to yield. Isabella was eventually persuaded that it was her duty to marry Conrad, that he was their only hope of keeping Saladin from a total conquest of their beleaguered kingdom. As soon as the divorce was rushed through by compliant bishops, Isabella and Conrad were wed in the siege camp of Acre. The Lionheart’s nemesis, the Bishop of Beauvais, was up to his nasty neck in this illegal business; he would be. But Isabella then showed that there was more to her than beauty and royal blood, for her first act of authority was to restore to Humphrey the family lands that had unfairly been taken from him several years earlier. Humphrey never remarried and died young. Isabella’s own history had more than its share of sadness, too. While she seems to have found happiness with her third husband, Henri, the Count of Champagne, that marriage was cut short by Henri’s untimely death, and she had to marry again in haste, so urgent was the need for a strong king. Isabella was wed four times and widowed three times before her own death when she was only thirty-three.