The Angevin Kings of Jerusalem

In 1184, King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, of Kingdom of Heaven fame, wrote a desperate open letter to the rulers of the Christian kingdoms in Europe.  He was dying of leprosy and his heir was a 5-year-old boy, his nephew and namesake, who was already showing signs of the same disease.  His only heirs were his two sisters, whose husbands were already maneuvering to seize the kingdom for themselves.  No one appeared to understand that the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, and with it the rest of the Crusader States were teetering on the brink of conquest by the forces of Sultan Saladin.  One of the addressees of the letter was King Henry II of England, a distant cousin.

Though they never referred to themselves as Plantagenets, indeed no one at this early stage did, the House of Anjou who ruled Jerusalem were in fact a cadet branch of England's royal family.  Fulk V of Anjou, 1089-1143, had several sons.  The oldest was Geoffrey, who used the broom plant as his personal badge, hence the later name of the Plantagenet (planta genista) dynasty.  Fulk V as Count of Anjou initially supported the Kings of France against the English, but later allowed his son Geoffrey to marry the widowed daughter of Henry I, Empress Matilda.  In order to be of a somewhat similar social strata as his new wife, Geoffrey had to have a title.  Fulk gave up his title as Count of Anjou, Maine and Tourraine to his eldest son.  He had other, grander things in store for himself and Geoffrey's two younger brothers. 

In 1118, he had gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and became an affiliate of the Knights Templar.  Unable to become a Knight himself because he was married, Fulk subsidized and supported their order.  When his first wife, Ermengarde of Maine died, Fulk received a proposal from Baldwin II of Jerusalem to marry his daughter Melisandre.  In 1129, Fulk settled his European inheritance on Geoffrey, left for Jerusalem, married Melisandre and, in 1131, became joint ruler with her of Jerusalem on the death of her father, Baldwin II.  Fulk lived until 1143, when his eldest son by Melisandre, Baldwin III succeeded his father as King of Jerusalem.  Baldwin had no heirs, but his brother, Amalric I had married Agnes of Courtenay.  Their son, the future Baldwin IV, was born in 1161.  He was, thus, a first cousin once removed of Henry II, and a second cousin to the future Richard the Lionheart.  When Baldwin was about 7 years old, his tutor, William of Tyre, noticed some numbness and skin irritation on the boy's right arm.  It developed into leprosy.

Baldwin refused to be sidelined his disease, learning to ride, hold a sword and do whatever else needed doing to rule a kingdom under perpetual siege.  Unlike in the movie or various novels, he didn't wear a mask, though portions of his arm were bandaged as needed.  By the age f 13, he was already leading armies, though with the assistance of experienced leaders, against the Saracens.  He would continue to try to interest Europe in coming to the assistance of Jerusalem until he was too sick to hold a pen or worry about the problem any more.  He died in 1185 at age 24, a true lion's heart.  In 1191, his cousin Richard would arrive in the Holy Land to try to salvage what was left.