Baldwin IV: The King Everyone Wanted Dead

The Gates That Wouldn't Open

Spring, 1184. A dying king knocks on the gates of his own city. His servants have carried his litter across forty miles of coastal road. His body is wrapped in bandages that can no longer hide the smell of decay. He is blind, paralyzed, and rotting alive--but he is still king.

The gates of Ascalon remain closed.

Behind those walls stands the man Baldwin has spent three years trying to destroy: Guy de Lusignan, his own brother-in-law. The man his sister loves. The man who will, if Baldwin fails, inherit everything.

Baldwin raises a ruined hand to knock again. It is a ceremonial gesture--a king demanding entry to his own city, witnessed by the High Court of Jerusalem. A test. A trap.

The gates stay shut.

In this moment, Baldwin knows the truth that has been gnawing at him for years. His enemies aren't in Damascus or Cairo. They're in his own family. And his body is failing faster than his schemes.

The Wedding That Started a War

Four years earlier, during Holy Week of 1180, two armies marched on Jerusalem.

Not Saladin's armies. Christian ones.

Raymond of Tripoli and Bohemond of Antioch arrived with their knights, their banners, and their plans. They wanted Baldwin to abdicate. They wanted his sister Sibylla to marry a man of their choosing--Baldwin of Ibelin, a local lord who would do what he was told. They wanted the Courtenay family, Baldwin's mother's people, out of power forever.

Baldwin's mother, Agnes of Courtenay, saw them coming. She'd spent years building a network of loyalists in every corner of the court. She knew which bishops could be bought, which lords owed her favors, which servants would carry messages in the night.

She found her son in his chambers, preparing for Easter services. The leprosy had taken his right hand by then--the fingers curled into a useless claw. His face was beginning to disfigure. But his mind was sharp, and he understood immediately what she was proposing.

A preemptive strike. Marry Sibylla before Raymond could force the issue.

"To whom?" Baldwin asked.

Agnes had already chosen. Guy de Lusignan had arrived from France two years earlier--handsome, charming, connected to the powerful Poitevin families. He was eager, pliable, and grateful. Most importantly, he was there.

The wedding happened within days. No public announcement. No proper ceremony. The chronicles call it "canonically invalid"--a marriage so rushed it barely counted as legal.

Raymond arrived to find the door already closed. Sibylla was married. His coup had failed before it began. He retreated to Tripoli, humiliated.

Baldwin thought he had won. He had blocked his enemies and secured his sister's future in a single stroke.

He had no idea he had just handed his kingdom to a fool.

The Disaster He Chose

Guy de Lusignan was everything Baldwin had hoped for--at first. Handsome enough to charm the court. Eager enough to take orders. Connected enough to bring French support. William of Tyre, the kingdom's chronicler, damned him with faint praise: "satis nobilis"--noble enough.

Noble enough. Not wise enough. Not strong enough. Not careful enough.

Baldwin began to notice the problems within months. Guy couldn't read a room. He couldn't keep his mouth shut. He made enemies effortlessly--lords who had been Baldwin's allies suddenly found excuses to leave court when Guy entered.

But the real problem wasn't Guy. It was Sibylla.

She loved him.

Not strategically. Not politically. She loved him the way people love in songs--completely, irrationally, without calculation. Every flaw Baldwin saw in Guy, Sibylla saw as charm. Every enemy Guy made, Sibylla defended.

Baldwin had married his sister to a puppet. He hadn't expected her to fall in love with him.

By 1183, Baldwin was blind, bedridden, and desperate. He had watched Guy fumble one test after another. He had watched the barons' patience erode. He had felt his own body accelerating toward death.

Then came the invasion.

The Coward at the Pools

Saladin crossed the Jordan in September 1183 with the largest army he had fielded since Montgisard. Baldwin was too sick to lead the defense. Guy was regent--the logical choice.

Guy assembled the army at the Pools of Goliath and... stopped.

Saladin's forces spread across the Christian lowlands, burning, looting, killing. The barons begged Guy to attack. Raymond of Tripoli counseled patience--wait them out, let the heat and logistics force Saladin home. Reynald de Chatillon demanded blood.

Guy chose nothing. He sat in his tent while smoke rose from a dozen villages. He listened to the screaming arguments of his generals and issued no orders.

The standoff lasted weeks.

Eventually, Saladin withdrew. His army was too large to maintain in the field indefinitely--Raymond's calculation had been correct. But the way it happened was catastrophic for Guy.

The barons saw a regent who had frozen while the kingdom burned. Raymond saw a commander who had followed his advice but made it look like paralysis. Reynald saw a coward who wouldn't fight.

Guy had managed to unite every faction in disgust.

Two months later, when Saladin besieged Kerak castle, the barons refused to march under Guy's command. They would not follow the man who had watched the kingdom burn and done nothing.

It was Baldwin who led the relief force. Blind, paralyzed, strapped to a litter between two horses--the dying king rode to save the castle that his healthy regent had failed to protect.

The moment Baldwin returned to Jerusalem, he stripped Guy of the regency.

The Crown for a Child

What followed was the most audacious gambit of Baldwin's reign.

He could not kill Guy. He could not divorce Sibylla from Guy--she refused, and her love protected him. He could not exile Guy without provoking a civil war with his own sister.

But he could change the succession.

Sibylla had a son from her first marriage--a boy named Baldwin, five years old, too young to rule but old enough to wear a crown. If this child became king, Guy would be pushed aside. The boy's regents would rule, and Baldwin could choose those regents.

Agnes of Courtenay supported the plan. It kept power in the family. Raymond of Tripoli supported it because he expected to be named regent. The barons supported it because anyone was better than Guy.

On November 20, 1183--the feast of Saint Edmund the Martyr--the child was crowned in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Every baron in the kingdom knelt to pay homage to the new co-king.

Every baron except Guy.

He wasn't invited.

The Annulment That Wouldn't Happen

Now Baldwin faced his final problem. The child was crowned, but children die. If Baldwin V died before reaching adulthood, Sibylla would inherit--and that meant Guy would inherit with her.

The only solution was annulment. Break the marriage, find Sibylla a new husband, eliminate Guy entirely.

Baldwin approached Patriarch Heraclius with a legal argument: he had forced his sister to marry Guy against her will. The marriage was therefore unlawful. It should be dissolved.

It was a lie. Everyone knew it was a lie. Sibylla had chosen Guy herself, had fought for him, had refused every attempt to separate them.

And she refused again.

Baldwin ordered Guy to appear at court. Guy claimed illness. Baldwin ordered him again. Guy stayed in Ascalon. Baldwin summoned the High Court and announced that Guy had forfeited his fiefs through disobedience.

Guy responded by locking himself in Ascalon with Sibylla.

That was when Baldwin made his final journey--carried on a litter across forty miles of road, accompanied by the entire High Court of Jerusalem, to demand entry to his own city.

And the gates stayed shut.

Guy stood on the battlements, watching his king knock on the walls. Sibylla stood beside him, her hand in his. They had made their choice. They would rather defy a dying king than be separated.

Baldwin could have besieged his own city. He could have torn it apart stone by stone. But his body wouldn't last long enough, and the political cost would be catastrophic.

Instead, he turned toward Jaffa. He installed loyal governors in the surrounding towns, cutting Guy off from supplies and allies. He confiscated half of Guy's county with a stroke of his quill.

It wasn't enough. It would never be enough.

The Final Arrangement

In late 1184, Baldwin's mother Agnes died at Acre. She had spent twenty years building the faction that kept her son in power. Now her network began to fray.

Baldwin felt his own end approaching. The fevers came more frequently. The infections spread. He slept for days at a time, waking only to issue orders in moments of lucidity.

He summoned the High Court one final time. He needed a regent for his nephew--someone who would protect the boy until he came of age. Someone who would keep Guy away from power.

The barons nominated Raymond of Tripoli unanimously.

Baldwin accepted. He had never trusted Raymond. The man had tried to overthrow him four years earlier. But there was no one else. Raymond was competent, respected, and he hated Guy almost as much as Baldwin did.

The terms were specific. Raymond would serve as regent for ten years--until the child king came of age. Joscelin of Courtenay would be the boy's personal guardian. The military orders would hold the royal fortresses. And if the child died before reaching majority, the pope and the kings of Europe would decide the succession.

Baldwin was building a cage. Even from beyond the grave, he meant to keep Guy out.

Shortly before his death, he ordered one final ceremony. In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the child Baldwin V was carried on the shoulders of Balian of Ibelin--a pointed gesture. Balian was tall, but that wasn't why they chose him. Balian was married to the dowager queen. He represented Isabella's family, the alternative line of succession.

Every faction was putting its weight behind the child. Every faction was unified against Guy.

In March 1185--or perhaps a few weeks later--Baldwin IV of Jerusalem died. He was twenty-four years old. He had spent the last three years of his life trying to save his kingdom from his own family.

The Cage That Broke

Baldwin's arrangements lasted eighteen months.

His nephew died in the summer of 1186--not yet nine years old. The chronicles whispered about poison, but the boy had always been sickly. It hardly mattered how he died. What mattered was what came next.

The High Court ruled that neither Sibylla nor her half-sister Isabella could be crowned without consulting the pope and the kings of Europe--exactly as Baldwin had specified. Raymond prepared to enforce the ruling.

Sibylla's faction moved faster.

They seized Jerusalem while Raymond was in Nablus. They barred the city gates to prevent interruption. They cornered the patriarch and demanded a coronation.

Sibylla agreed to one condition: she would divorce Guy, as the barons had always wanted. But she must be allowed to choose her next husband freely.

The barons agreed. Finally, after six years, they would be rid of Guy de Lusignan.

On coronation day, Patriarch Heraclius placed the crown on Sibylla's head and asked her to summon her new consort.

She turned and called Guy forward.

The barons watched in disbelief as Sibylla crowned her divorced husband king of Jerusalem. She had outplayed them all. Every scheme, every alliance, every sacrifice Baldwin had made to keep Guy from power--she undid it in a single moment.

Raymond of Tripoli walked out of Jerusalem that day and never came back. Balian of Ibelin went into exile. Half the kingdom's nobility refused to recognize Guy's coronation.

A year later, Guy led the entire army of Jerusalem into a waterless wasteland at the Horns of Hattin. He marched his men straight into Saladin's trap--the same Saladin that Baldwin had fought for a decade. The same Saladin who had never been able to destroy Baldwin's armies.

Guy accomplished in one afternoon what Saladin couldn't do in ten years.

Nearly every knight in the kingdom was killed or captured. Guy was dragged away in chains. Three months later, Jerusalem fell.

Baldwin IV had seen it all coming. He had spent his dying years trying to prevent exactly this disaster. He had schemed and plotted and defied his own rotting body to keep Guy away from the throne.

And in the end, love won.

His sister loved a fool. And that fool destroyed everything.