Guy of Lusignan
Guy of Lusignan (French: Guy de Lusignan, † 1194) was a French Noble west of the house of Lusignan. In the Holy Land, he became King of Jerusalem by marriage, and later King of Cyprus.
As king of Jerusalem, he led the Empire in the defeat at Hattin, went through the 1187 Jerusalem to Saladin lost.
Life
Guido was a younger son of the Crusader Hugo VIII of Lusignan and his wife Bourgogne, daughter of Godfrey I of Rancon. His brothers were Hugo, Gottfried and Amalric, which are also historically prominent representatives of the family.
Career in the Holy Land
Guido reached the Middle East in the 1170s. 1180 arranged the drawn by the leper King Baldwin IV 's marriage with Guido his sister Sibyl and made him the Count of Jaffa and Ascalon and Bailiff of Jerusalem. Guido started soon so that, with his wife Sibylle against Baldwin and his regent Raymond III. To ally count of Tripoli. 1182 he brought Baldwin IV to appoint him regent and in 1183 to withdraw in favor of small Sibylle's son Baldwin V. Raymond III. was initially regent for Baldwin V, but Guido was able to take over this position themselves. When Baldwin V died in 1186, Guido called the throne ( justified by the law of succession to his wife Sibylle ) for themselves. With Sibylle he had two daughters, Alice and Marie, but already died young.
King of Jerusalem
Guido came to power, when the Ayyubid Sultan Saladin began his successful attacks on the kingdom. Many of the descendants of the first crusaders, who had grown up in the UK wished to make peace with Saladin, but the newcomers like Guido and Raynald of Chatillon examined combat. Rainald provoked Saladin with raids on trade caravans, even as there was peace between the Kingdom and the Sultan. 1186 Saladin responded with an invasion and the aim to recapture Jerusalem from the Christians. 1187 Guido tried against Raymond Council to lift Saladin's siege of Tiberias; Guido's army was encircled and thereby cut off from water. On July 4, 1187, the army of the Kingdom has been completely wiped out in the Battle of Hattin; Guido was captured.
As a result, Jerusalem fell and the largest part of the Kingdom of Saladin. Exceptions have included Tyre, which was from another newcomer, namely Conrad of Montferrat, defended. 1187 Guido was released in exchange for the peaceful surrender of the fortress city of Ashkelon to Saladin. As Sibylle died in 1190, Guido lost his claim to the throne. Konrad, who married Sibylle's younger sister Isabella, now claimed his place. However, Guido held his erect claim to the throne, where he became the English King Richard the Lionheart, who was with the Third Crusade in the country, encouraged. The French and German crusade participants and the local nobility, however, supported Konrad. Finally, in April 1192, Conrad was elected by the barons and prelates of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in place of Guido's king.
Lord of Cyprus
Richard, who had conquered on the way to the Holy Land, the island of Cyprus, this was sold in May 1192 to Guido to bring out him from the internal strife in Palestine. Guido then gave his claim to the throne of Jerusalem and was the first ruler of the Kingdom of Cyprus. He died in 1194 and was buried in the Templar Church in Nicosia. After his death, his brother Amalric succeeded him as ruler of Cyprus, which also regained the crown of Jerusalem in 1197. His descendants ruled the island until 1474, when the last male descendant of the family, James III. , Underage died.