Guy of Lusignan

Guy of Lusignan was king of Jerusalem when the kingdom was destroyed at Hattin, and he is usually blamed for it. He was a younger son of a Poitevin family, banished from Poitou after killing the Earl of Salisbury in a botched attempt to kidnap Eleanor of Aquitaine. He arrived in the Holy Land some time before 1180 and was married in haste to Sibylla, sister of the leper king Baldwin IV, to head off a rival faction. Baldwin came to regret it and tried to exclude him from the succession, but on the death of the child king Baldwin V in 1186 Sibylla was crowned and crowned Guy herself. He was never accepted by the kingdom's barons. In July 1187, against the advice of Raymond of Tripoli, he marched the army away from water across the dry plateau towards Tiberias to relieve a siege. Saladin's forces surrounded them at the Horns of Hattin, set fire to the scrub, and destroyed a force that represented nearly the whole fighting strength of the kingdom. Jerusalem fell within three months. Saladin spared Guy and released him, and he spent the Third Crusade besieging Acre and quarrelling over the throne with Conrad of Montferrat. He lost it in 1192 and was compensated with Cyprus, bought from Richard I, where his family ruled for three centuries. Contemporaries were merciless about him. One chronicler recorded that when Saladin offered the captive Guy a cup of iced water, he passed it to Raynald of Chatillon, whom Saladin then killed with his own hand - the gesture mattered because a captive given drink by his captor could not be harmed. Guy's own life was spared partly because he was worth more alive.

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