King of Jerusalem (1197–1205) and first king of Cyprus, who stabilised the crusader states after the Third Crusade through truces with the Ayyubids and a firm, pragmatic rule.
Amalric II of Lusignan, often called Aimery, was king of Jerusalem from 1197 to 1205 and the first king of Cyprus. The elder brother of the disastrous Guy of Lusignan, he was a far abler ruler, who had risen through the great offices of the crusader kingdom before making his own fortune on Cyprus.
After the accidental death of Henry II of Champagne in 1197, Aimery married the heiress Isabella I and became king of Jerusalem, holding both crusader crowns in personal union. His reign brought a rare period of stability: he secured long truces with Saladin's Ayyubid successors, restored order to the shrunken kingdom based at Acre, and gave it competent government until his death in 1205.
Aimery was born about 1145 into the house of Lusignan in Poitou, the elder brother of Guy. He came east to the Kingdom of Jerusalem and rose in its service, becoming constable of the kingdom and marrying into the powerful Ibelin family. Captured at Hattin in 1187 alongside the other leaders, he was later released.
When Richard the Lionheart conquered Cyprus during the Third Crusade and sold it on, Aimery acquired the island and established himself as its lord, then as its first king, founding the Lusignan dynasty that would rule Cyprus for three centuries.
Aimery is remembered as the capable brother — everything that Guy of Lusignan was not. Where Guy's rule ended in the catastrophe of Hattin, Aimery showed patience, political skill, and a sound grasp of what the diminished crusader states could and could not do. He preferred negotiation and consolidation to reckless war.
Contemporary opinion, even among those who despised his brother, credited Aimery with wisdom and firmness. He was a careful administrator who restored the laws and government of the kingdom, and a realist in diplomacy who understood that the survival of Outremer after Saladin depended on truces, not on hopeless offensives. He stands as one of the more competent rulers the crusader states produced.
Aimery secured a royal crown for Cyprus, becoming its first king and founding the long Lusignan rule of the island. In 1197, when Henry II of Champagne died in a fall from a window at Acre, the barons offered the crown of Jerusalem to Aimery, who married Henry's widow — the four-times-married heiress Isabella I — and so united the two crowns in his own person.
As king he governed the rump kingdom, now centred on Acre, with notable success. He concluded a series of truces with the Ayyubid sultan al-Adil, Saladin's brother, that gave the crusader states years of peace, and he restored order and law after the upheavals of the Third Crusade. His reign is remembered as a rare interval of stable, effective rule in the kingdom's troubled later history.
Aimery died at Acre on 1 April 1205 — by a persistent tradition, from eating a surfeit of fish. His wife Isabella I died within weeks. The crown of Jerusalem passed to Isabella's eldest daughter, Maria of Montferrat, while Cyprus passed to Aimery's own line, permanently separating the two crowns he had briefly joined.
Amalric II is remembered as one of the ablest kings of the later crusader states and as the founder of the Lusignan Kingdom of Cyprus, which outlasted the mainland kingdom by nearly two centuries. His truces with the Ayyubids bought Outremer a valuable breathing space, and his firm government stabilised Jerusalem after the disasters of the 1180s. In the contrast between him and his brother Guy, the chroniclers found a lesson in the difference an able ruler could make.