Baldwin II of Constantinople
Baldwin II reigned over the Latin Empire for twenty-four years and spent most of them abroad asking for money. He was born in Constantinople in 1217, the son of Yolanda of Flanders, and inherited a state that consisted of the city, its immediate hinterland and almost nothing else, surrounded by Greek and Bulgarian territory and dependent on Venice. He became emperor at eleven under the regency of John of Brienne, a former king of Jerusalem in his eighties. The reign was a permanent fundraising tour. He travelled through Italy, France, Flanders, England and Spain repeatedly, mortgaged his own son to Venetian merchants as security for a loan, sold the county of Namur, and stripped the lead from the palace roofs to sell. His most successful transaction was in relics. He sold the Crown of Thorns to Louis IX of France in 1238 for a sum that has been estimated at half the French crown's annual revenue, and followed it with fragments of the True Cross, the Holy Lance, the Sponge and a good deal else; Louis built the Sainte-Chapelle to hold them. The money paid mercenaries who could not hold what was left. Michael Palaiologos took the city in July 1261 when the garrison and the Venetian fleet were away on an expedition, and Baldwin escaped by sea. He spent his last twelve years in Italy and France trying to organise an expedition to recover it, and died in 1273. The relics he sold outlived the empire he sold them for by seven and a half centuries. Most were destroyed in the Revolution and the Crown of Thorns survived, was kept at Notre-Dame, and was carried out of the burning cathedral by a chaplain and a fire officer in April 2019.
- Lived: 1217 CE – 1273 CE
- Nationality: Flemish
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
