The Sons of Melisende: Baldwin III, Amalric, and Kingship in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1143-1174 CE

This dissertation examines the development of kingship and royal ideology in the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the reigns of Baldwin III (r. 1143-63) and Amalric (r. 1163-74). During their collective thirty years on the throne, they moved the ideas of kingship in Jerusalem away from the memory of the First Crusade and toward a Byzantine conception of rulership, including the empire’s policy of Christian ecumenism. By doing so, they incorporated Byzantine ideas and symbols into their own ideas of kingship and endeavored to make the Frankish presence in the east an indelible part of the landscape of the Levant.