Henry of Flanders
Henry of Flanders ruled the Latin Empire of Constantinople for eleven years and was much better at it than anyone expected. He was the younger brother of Baldwin I, took part in the Fourth Crusade and the sack of 1204, and became regent in 1205 when Baldwin was captured by the Bulgarians at Adrianople and disappeared into a prison at Tarnovo. He was crowned in 1206 once it was accepted that his brother was dead. The empire he inherited was a set of claims. Greek successor states at Nicaea and Epirus held most of Asia Minor and western Greece, Kaloyan of Bulgaria had destroyed the Latin field army, the Venetians held the trade and a quarter of the territory, and the crusader barons quarrelled over fiefs they had not conquered. Henry fought on every front and won most of the time, and he did something none of the other Latin rulers thought to do: he governed the Greeks as subjects rather than as heretics. He reopened Greek churches, refused papal demands to compel Latin rites, appointed Greeks to office, and married the daughter of a Bulgarian tsar and then dealt with Epirus by treaty. The result was that his authority was accepted in Thrace and much of Greece in a way it never was again. He died suddenly at Thessalonica in 1216, aged about forty and possibly poisoned. The empire he held together lasted another forty-five years and never had another ruler of his quality. His reign is the standard counterfactual for the Latin Empire. A conquest state that governed its Greek subjects tolerably and defended itself competently might have lasted, and after Henry it had neither, which is why Michael Palaiologos walked into the city in 1261 almost unopposed.
- Lived: 1174 CE – 1216 CE
- Nationality: Flemish
- Roles: emperor, military_leader
