Aimery of Cyprus

Aimery of Lusignan (Latin: Aimericus, Greek: Αμωρί, Amorí; before 1155 – 1 April 1205), erroneously referred to as Amalric (French: Amaury) in earlier scholarship, was the first king of Cyprus from 1196 and the king of Jerusalem as the husband of Queen Isabella I from 1198 to his death. He was a capable ruler whose reign was a period of peace and stability in both kingdoms, and the progenitor of the Lusignan dynasty of the Kingdom of Cyprus.

Aimery was a younger son of Hugh VIII of Lusignan, a nobleman from Poitou. After participating in a rebellion against King Henry II of England in 1168, Aimery went to the Latin East and settled in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Aimery's marriage to Eschiva of the influential Ibelin family strengthened his position in the kingdom. His younger brother Guy married Sibylla, the sister and heir presumptive of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem. Baldwin made Aimery constable of Jerusalem around 1180. Guy and Sibylla became king and queen in 1186. Aimery was one of the commanders of the Christian army in the Battle of Hattin, which ended with a decisive defeat of Christians by the Muslim Ayyubids in 1187 and the subsequent near destruction of the kingdom.

Aimery supported King Guy when the latter besieged Acre and remained loyal to him after Queen Sibylla's death in 1190, when most barons insisted that the throne had passed to Sibylla's half-sister, Isabella I. Amid insurmountable unpopularity, Guy left for Cyprus in 1192 while Aimery remained in the kingdom as constable. Isabella married Count Henry II of Champagne, who arrested Aimery after discovering a plot to deliver the city of Tyre to Guy. Upon his release, Aimery joined Guy on Cyprus. When Guy died in 1194, the Cypriot nobles elected Aimery as their new lord. Aimery immediately sought to raise Cyprus to the status of a kingdom, with a government and institutions modelled after those of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He acknowledged Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI as his suzerain, and Henry VI authorized Aimery's coronation as king of Cyprus in 1197.

Soon after they were both widowed, the barons of Jerusalem offered Aimery to marry Isabella and become king of Jerusalem too; he accepted and was crowned at her side. He kept the kingdoms of Cyprus and Jerusalem separate, but sent Cypriot troops to fight on the mainland, where he spent most of his reign. He sought to codify the laws of Jerusalem, resulting in the compilation of the Livre au roi. After surviving an assassination attempt in 1198, Aimery attempted to circumvent the law to banish Isabella's seneschal, Ralph of Saint Omer, whom he thought responsible. He signed two consecutive truces with al-Adil I, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, the latter of which secured the Christian possession of the coastline from Acre to Antioch. The personal union of the kingdoms of Cyprus and Jerusalem ended when Aimery died of food poisoning; Cyprus passed to his only surviving son, Hugh I, while Isabella retained the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Aimery was born before 1155. He was the son of Hugh VIII of Lusignan, a lord from Poitou, and his wife, Burgundia of Rancon. The House of Lusignan was noted for generations of crusaders who had fought for the Holy Land in the Levant. His great-grandfather, Hugh VI of Lusignan, died in the Battle of Ramla in 1102; Aimery's grandfather, Hugh VII of Lusignan, took part in the Second Crusade. Aimery's father departed for the Levant in 1163, leaving his lands to be governed by Aimery's eldest brother, Hugh Brunus. The elder Hugh was captured by Muslims at the Battle of Harim and died in captivity in the 1160s.

In 1168 Aimery joined a rebellion against his family's suzerain, King Henry II of England. The Lusignan brothers ambushed Henry's wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, as the queen travelled to Poitiers and killed the leader of her guard, Patrick, earl of Salisbury. Shortly after the rebellion, Aimery left Poitou for the Levant and settled in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He was captured in battle by Muslims and held in Damascus. According to a 13th-century tradition, King Amalric of Jerusalem ransomed Aimery; people were fascinated by the similarity of their names and the story entered the folklore of the Latin East.

Aimery secured his position in the Latin East by marrying Eschiva of Ibelin, the elder daughter of the lord of Ramla, Baldwin of Ibelin, who was one of the most powerful noblemen in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. According to Ernoul, whose reliability in this instance is questionable, Aimery became a lover of King Amalric's former wife, Agnes of Courtenay. Ernoul consistently portrays Agnes unfavorably; his information about her probably came from her rival, Maria Komnene, Amalric's second wife. King Amalric died on 11 July 1174 and was succeeded by his and Agnes's thirteen-year-old son, Baldwin IV. Aimery became a member of the royal court with his father-in-law's support. He may have been appointed chamberlain, which would indicate a close relationship with the royal family.

Aimery's youngest brother, Guy, married Baldwin IV's widowed sister, Sibylla, in April 1180. Ernoul writes that Sibylla had promised herself to Aimery's father-in-law, Baldwin of Ibelin, but Aimery had described Guy as a handsome and charming young man to her and her mother, Agnes, and then travelled to Poitou in the winter of 1179/80 and brought Guy to Jerusalem. Another source, William of Tyre, does not accord to Aimery any role in Guy and Sibylla's marriage. The historian Bernard Hamilton dismisses this account and argues that King Baldwin arranged the match. Because the young king had lepromatous leprosy, Sibylla was his heir presumptive and Guy's marriage to her put him in line to become the next king, much to the dismay of the Ibelins and their allies.