Melisende of Tripoli

Melisende of Tripoli (also: Melisendis ) (c. 1143; † after 1161 ) was the younger daughter of the Count of Tripoli, Raymond II and his wife Hodierna, the daughter of the king of Jerusalem, Baldwin II.

Was Manuel I of Byzantium, after his first wife, Bertha of Sulzbach had died in 1159, looking for a new wife. Baldwin's cousins ​​Maria of Antioch ( daughter of Constance and her first husband Raymond of Poitiers) and Melisende were eligible. Since Baldwin II did not want to exacerbate the Byzantine influence in Antioch, he suggested to the Emperor Melisende.

There were rumors that she was born out of wedlock, she was rejected in 1160 by Emperor Manuel I of Byzantium as a bride.

Melisende was so distraught that they never found themselves again.

Maybe it was the real figure behind the " distant love," Princesse Lointaine those that have been celebrated in the twelfth century the poet and troubadour Jaufré Rudel (1130-1170) and later by Edmond Rostand's play of the same was known - but also possibly her mother. Just as Francesco Petrarch's Trionfo d' Amore, Swinburne's Triumph of Time and Browning Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli.