Hodierna was a politically active countess and is alleged to have played a part in the disposing of her husband's cousin and rival Bertrand.

Historian Kevin Lewis considers it "very possible" that Hodierna's betrothal to Raymond was first brought in the aftermath of this dispute up as a way to reconcile the two ruling families.

[7] Lewis and Hans E. Mayer believe that Hodierna may have been betrothed to Raymond, son of Count Pons of Tripoli, already at this time.

[1] Historian Malcolm Barber believes that the union was the result of Queen Melisende's effort to provide for Hodierna and to link the ruling houses of all the crusader states.

[2] Hodierna, already called the countess of Tripoli but not accompanied by her husband, attended the court of King Fulk and Queen Melisende in Acre in December 1138.

[14] An anonymous monk from France wrote that Alfonso was poisoned on the orders of Queen Melisende,[16] who allegedly wished to safeguard Raymond and Hodierna's position in Tripoli.

[19] Raymond could not dislodge his cousin, and enlisted the help of Nur al-Din Zengi and Mu'in ad-Din Unur, who captured Urayma and Bertrand within it.

[19] According to a "fanciful Occitan tale", as Lewis describes it, Hodierna had Rudel buried in the house of the Knights Templar in Tripoli.

[24] According to the legend involving Rudel, pilgrims returning from the Levant spread stories of Hodierna's beauty in Europe, and there were rumours that her daughter Melisende of Tripoli was born from an extramarital love affair,[25] which Lewis believes may have led to Raymond's jealousy.

[27] In 1152 Hodierna's nephew King Baldwin III of Jerusalem, son of Queen Melisende, summoned a meeting of the crusader states' nobility in Tripoli.

[34] Historian Bernard Hamilton suggests that it was Hodierna who initiated the establishment of Belmont, the first Cistercian monastery in the crusader states.

Hodierna and her sister Queen Melisende spent a year preparing the girl's dowry at a great expense to the royal treasury.

Lewis and Richard agree that they came to discuss with Baldwin the plans for the imminent marriage of Hodierna's daughter, to whom they referred to in a charter as "the future empress of the throne of Constantinople".

[41] Lewis believes that Archbishop William of Tyre refrained from inviting any criticism of Hodierna because of his support for her son in the politics of Jerusalem.

[44] Lewis concludes that Hodierna has been overlooked by historians in favor of her "more famous and better documented" older sisters, Melisende and Alice,[21] despite being just as willing to engage in politics.

[42] Whereas most countesses of Tripoli are comparatively undistinguished figures, Lewis finds that Hodierna "eclipsed her husband", but was in the posterity reduced to being the princesse lointaine, a "beautiful yet voiceless target of a distant stranger's affections".

Rudel's obsession with Hodierna remained a topic of popular interest into the modern age: in the 19th-century Edmond Rostand made it the subject of his operetta La Princesse lointaine, and in the 20th century P. G. Wodehouse mentioned it in a novella.

Thus, Lewis notes, the legacy of Tripoli under Raymond II and Hodierna were not political or military achievements but "lustful, exotic and even farcical fantasies".