Fulk makes a terrible fau par basically. He does try to get one of his men to fight him in a duel. But it's not successful, and the queen is furious. And people say the king isn't safe around melisond than you'll sow from then on. She reasserts herself. She's there all the time. It's we all the time? So that's just the manison di sho she have her own private guard? Or did she have a particularly bad temper with her own private gardo?
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most powerful woman in the Crusader states in the century after the First Crusade. Melisende (1105-61) was born and raised after the mainly Frankish crusaders had taken Jerusalem from the Fatimids, and her father was King of Jerusalem. She was married to Fulk from Anjou, on the understanding they would rule together, and for 30 years she vied with him and then their son as they struggled to consolidate their Frankish state in the Holy Land.
The image above is of the coronation of Fulk with Melisende, from Livre d'Eracles, Guillaume de Tyr (1130?-1186)
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France
With
Natasha Hodgson
Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Nottingham Trent University
Katherine Lewis
Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield
and
Danielle Park
Visiting Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson