Baldwin IV of Jerusalem

Baldwin IV ruled the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1174 to 1185 while suffering from leprosy. Despite worsening illness, he led armies against Saladin and won a striking victory at Montgisard in 1177. His reign was increasingly dominated by the succession because he could not produce an heir, and rival court factions formed around his sister Sibylla, her husband Guy of Lusignan and the claims of the young Baldwin V.

Sharon Kay Penman’s The Land Beyond the Sea gives Baldwin a central role and portrays his intelligence, physical courage and desperate management of factional politics. Cecelia Holland’s Jerusalem also explores the kingdom during his reign. Historical fiction is drawn to the contrast between his failing body and the authority he continued to exercise, though modern admiration can sometimes obscure the harsher realities of crusader rule.

In non-fiction, Baldwin IV of Jerusalem is discussed in Dan Jones’s Crusaders and Dan Jones’s The Templars. In Dan Jones’s Crusaders, Dan Jones begins with the preaching and violence of the First Crusade, then follows the creation of crusader states, the responses of Muslim rulers, the role of Byzantium and the repeated expeditions launched to defend or recover Jerusalem and other sacred territories.