succeeded as king of Jerusalem two years later, reuniting the crowns for
thefirst time since his great-grandfather.^128
As thirty years of plotting and scheming came to nothing, Hugh seems
to have decided that the time had come for him to leave the Latin East.
What is more, there were very good reasons for him to go to the West–
and sooner, rather than later. Theobald IV’s namesake and successor
as count of Champagne had expressed concern that Hugh had not yet
come to France, to be formally invested with his lands there. In response,
various leading Latin Easternfigures–including the patriarch of Jerusa-
lem, the masters of the three main Military Orders, and Geoffrey of
Sargines–wrote to Theobald V on Hugh’s behalf, explaining his absence
and requesting a further delay.^129 By April 1268, though, Hugh himself
was in the West.^130 The new phase, which opened in this way, would be
among the most fascinating in the family’s history.
(^128) See Edbury,The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 90. (^129) ‘Catalogue’, no. 185.
(^130) See Roserot,Dictionnaire, i, 245.
102 In the Pages of Joinville (c. 1237–1267)