Through his marriage to Mary of Lusignan, Walter had three sons, and
their names are particularly revealing. The eldest was called John, no
doubt in honour of the very greatest of the Brienne dynasty, who had
protected Walter’s county for him during his long minority. However,
the names of the younger sons–Hugh and Aimery–are unprecedented
in Brienne history. They were, in fact, characteristic appellations of the
house of Lusignan. They show that Walter wanted his children to be seen
as their mother’s sons (through whom they stood a reasonable chance of
inheriting the crown of Cyprus, in due course).
However,thebattleofLaForbiewasthestartofarunofbadfortune
that would see the Briennes balked, in the end, not only of the throne of
Cyprus but, arguably, of that of Jerusalem as well. Walter’ssonswere
still very young when he disappeared into Ayyubid captivity. The eldest,
John, did not come of age for somefifteen years. In France, moreover,
Walter’s fate remained unconfirmed as late as March 1250–although,
as we have seen, his remains were returned to Acre a year later.^99 Yet it
is arguable that this same period, the early to mid-1250s, constituted
the real nightmare for the young Briennes. (SeeGenealogy 6for what
follows.) In 1253, their uncle, the king of Cyprus, died–but he had
managed, at the last, to produce an heir, the infant King Hugh II. The
Briennes, therefore, were notgoingtoinheritthecrown–at least, not
for the moment. What made things so much worse for them, though,
was the premature death of their mother, Mary, a couple of years
earlier, leaving her sons as orphans. As a result, the boys were brought
up by their mother’s younger sister, Isabella, who had a son of her own,
whom we may call Hugh of Antioch-Lusignan.^100 All of this would
become deeply meaningful before a decade was out.
Once John II was of age, though, it was necessary for him to go to
France to be formally invested with the county of Brienne and his other
territories there.^101 Since Walter IV’s departure from the West, these
lands had been administered by various baillis, such as the count’s
kinsmen Erard of Chacenay and Walter of Reynel, although Walter IV
himself had continued to issue charters for his French territories.^102 In
fact, soon after Walter IV’s disappearance into captivity, the Briennes’
lands in Champagne had grown substantially, although it could be
(^99) See‘Catalogue’, nos. 174, 176.
(^100) For a brief overview of these events, see Edbury,The Kingdom of Cyprus and the
Crusades,34–5.
(^101) The earliest clear and unambiguous evidence that John had taken the title of count is
102 ‘Catalogue’, no. 180 (April 1260), despite Roserot’s comments inDictionnaire, i, 245.
See‘Catalogue’, nos. 168–71, 173, 177. See also the following unpublished charter in
the BnF: MS Français 20690, fol. 179.
96 In the Pages of Joinville (c. 1237–1267)