and his family alone, as scions of a cadet branch of the royal house of
France. It could not simply be bartered away. Baldwin was in no
position to disagree. In early 1242, he formally withdrew the scheme
and conferred Courtenay on his wife, the Empress Mary.^46
Baldwin set out for the West again, cap in hand, in 1243, and remained
there for the nextfive years.^47 It is during this period that the empress
emerges as a significantfigure in Latin Constantinople, whose presence
and role needed to be recorded.^48 However, the real indicator of Mary’s
increased stature is that when Baldwinfinally returned to the city, she
set off to do the rounds in his stead. Moreover, her husband formally
acknowledged that he had granted her plenary powers to mortgage his
remaining Western estates, to pay a debt of 24,000hyperpyra.^49 It is at
this juncture that we can begin to discern Mary acting with assistance
from her brothers, whom she had not seen since they had all been
children. They certainly had much to do with one another by early
1249 at the latest, when Mary and her brother John raised a loan from
a Tuscanfinancier who was resident in Constantinople.^50 This was just
one of several large sums that Mary borrowed at around this time, and
most of them were paid off by her great-aunt, the French queen mother
Blanche.^51
The context for all this contact was, of course, Louis IX’sfirst crusade.
Naturally enough, it presented an exciting opportunity to the Latin
imperial couple, who aimed to get as much help as they could. Mary
came to visit the expedition during its long pause on Cyprus in 1248–9.
As we have seen, Joinville describes her arrival in some detail.‘Whilst we
were staying [on the island], the empress of Constantinople sent word to
me that she had come to Paphos...and that Erard of Brienne [that is,
Erard II of Ramerupt] and I should go and fetch her.’In other words,
Mary called,first and foremost, on her Brienne kin.
When we arrived there, we found that a strong wind had torn the cables of her
ship’s anchors, and driven the ship towards Acre. The only belongings she had
were the mantle she was wearing, and asurcotefor meals. We brought her to
Limassol, where the [French] king and queen and all the barons received her
most honourably. The next day, I sent her cloth to make a dress, and with it a
(^46) ‘Régestes des empereurs latins de Constantinople’, nos. 214–17. See also E. Gilles,
‘Men of France? Boundary Crossing in Constantinople in the 1240s’,inCentre and
Periphery: Studies on Power in the Medieval World in Honour of William Chester Jordan, ed.
K. L. Jansen, G. Geltner and A. E. Lester (Leiden, 2013), 215–16.
(^47) See Chrissis,Crusading in Frankish Greece, 140; and Longnon, L’empire latin de
48 Constantinople et la principauté de Morée, 185.
49 See, for example,‘Régestes des empereurs latins de Constantinople’, no. 230.
Ibid., nos. 239–42.^50 Ibid., nos. 243–4.^51 Ibid., nos. 245–52.
The Fate of the Latin Empire 85