it was a matter of duty. In the late 1129, Fulk, Count of Anjou, in central France, was persuaded to hand over his lands to his son Geoffrey and travel to Jerusalem to marry the aging king Baldwin II’s daughter and heir, Melisende. Two years later Baldwin died: Melisende was queen of Jerusalem and Fulk was king. He stayed in the east until his own death in 1143. This in turn meant that, back home in the west, Fulk’s descendants remained conscious that they now had family in the Holy Land. Fulk’s grandson Henry II of England was petitioned in the 1180s to honor family history by taking over the
...more
