The Poitevin family that gained the crowns of Jerusalem and Cyprus and ruled the crusader island kingdom for three centuries.
The Lusignans were a powerful family of Poitou, in western France, long troublesome vassals of the dukes of Aquitaine. In the 1180s Guy of Lusignan came east and married Sibylla, heiress of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, becoming king through his wife.
His accession divided the barons of the kingdom, and his reign coincided with the greatest crisis in its history.
In 1187 Guy led the army of Jerusalem to annihilation against Saladin at the Battle of Hattin, and the kingdom lost Jerusalem and almost all its territory. Discredited on the mainland, Guy was compensated during the Third Crusade with the island of Cyprus, which Richard the Lionheart had seized.
There the Lusignans established a Latin kingdom that would outlast every other crusader state.
Guy’s brother Amalric II secured the family’s position, taking the royal title in Cyprus and briefly reuniting it with the rump Kingdom of Jerusalem based at Acre. The Lusignans ruled Cyprus as kings until 1489, long after Acre fell in 1291, making it the last Latin outpost of the crusading age in the eastern Mediterranean.
From Cyprus the family also pressed claims to Jerusalem and Armenia, keeping the memory of the crusader kingdoms alive for two more centuries.