The Kingdom of Jerusalem was finally dissolved with the fall of Acre and the end of the Crusades in the Holy Land in 1291.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem had its origins in the First Crusade, when proposals to govern the city as an ecclesiastical state were rejected.

[1] Advocatus was a title with which Godfrey was already familiar as the term was much used in the lands where the Crusaders originated; it referred to a layman who protected and administered Church estates.

While several contemporary European states were moving towards centralized monarchies, the king of Jerusalem was continually losing power to the strongest of his barons.

When young Conrad III was king and living in Southern Germany, his father's second cousin, Hugh of Brienne, claimed the regency of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and, indirectly, his place in the succession.

After Conrad III's execution by Charles I of Sicily in 1268, the kingship was held by the Lusignan family, who were simultaneously kings of Cyprus.

Fulk then resigned his titles to his son Geoffrey and sailed to become King of Jerusalem, where he married Melisende on 2 June 1129.

These "natives" focused on Melisende's cousin, the popular Hugh II of Le Puiset, count of Jaffa, who was devotedly loyal to the Queen.

Contemporary author and historian William of Tyre wrote of Fulk "he never attempted to take the initiative, even in trivial matters, without (Melisende's) consent".

His horse stumbled, fell, and Fulk's skull was crushed by the saddle, "and his brains gushed forth from both ears and nostrils", as William of Tyre describes.

Fulk was survived by his son Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou by his first wife, and Baldwin III and Amalric I by Melisende.

His early reign was laced with squabbles with his mother over the possession of Jerusalem, till 1153, when he took personal hold of the government.

The hostility to Agnes may have been exaggerated by the chronicler William of Tyre, whom she prevented from becoming Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem decades later, as well as from William's continuators like Ernoul, who hints at a slight on her moral character: "car telle n'est que roine doie iestre di si haute cite comme de Jherusalem" ("there should not be such a queen for so holy a city as Jerusalem").

Amalric agreed and ascended the throne without a wife, although Agnes continued to hold the title Countess of Jaffa and Ascalon and received a pension from that fief's income.

To counter this, the king hastily arranged her marriage to Guy of Lusignan, younger brother of Amalric, the constable of the kingdom.

Raymond contested this, but when Guy fell out of favour with Baldwin the following year, he was re-appointed bailli and was given possession of Beirut.

It was agreed that, should the boy die during his minority, the regency would pass to "the most rightful heirs" until his kinsmen – the Kings of England and France and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor – and the Pope were able to adjudicate between the claims of Sibylla and Isabella.

Raymond was bailli, but he had passed Baldwin V's personal guardianship to Joscelin III of Edessa, his maternal great-uncle, claiming that he did not wish to attract suspicion if the child, who does not seem to have been robust, were to die.

Meanwhile, Raymond had gone to Nablus, home of Balian and Maria, and summoned all those nobles loyal to Princess Isabella and the Ibelins.

None of these claimants, however, has actually ruled over any part of Outremer: This diagram lists the rulers of the kingdom of Jerusalem, since the conquest of the city in 1099, during the First Crusade, to 1291, year of the fall of Acre.