his county was to pass to that cadet branch. Through his marriage to
Queen Isabella I of Jerusalem, though, Henry had had two surviving
daughters in the Holy Land: Alice and Philippa. As the direct descend-
ants of the senior line, it could be plausibly argued that they had the prior
claim to their father’s county. John’s involvement in this tangled affair
seems to have grown during thefive years that he spent in the West as
count of Brienne. In 1209, he was present when the French king declared
that it was the custom in France that no one’s paternal inheritance could
be challenged before he or she reached the age of majority. Moreover,
at around the same time, John and Count William of Joigny witnessed
what was effectively a profession of loyalty to Blanche by a third count,
William of Sancerre.^80
The biggest single upward step, and hence the critical phase of John’s
career, was his rise to become king of Jerusalem. In the early thirteenth
century, the kingdom of Jerusalem consisted of little more than a thin
coastal strip, dominated by the twin ports of Acre and Tyre but, crucially,
lacking the Holy City itself. It has to be said, at the outset, that John was
very much a‘second-best’choice for the crown. An earlier scheme had
recently collapsed, which would have seen the heiress to the kingdom,
Maria‘la marquise’, married off to a far more powerfulfigure, King
Peter II of Aragon. In the aftermath of all this, however, there was a great
deal of contact between the Champagne region and the Latin East, at just
the right time–and it is arguable, at least, that Blanche was mainly
responsible for this. As has just been noted, the main threat to her son’s
succession in Champagne was provided by the daughters of the former
count, Henry II, who were now growing up in the kingdom of Jerusalem.
Blanche’s strategy was to press for the implementation of another earlier
scheme, by which Alice and Philippa would be safely married off
to leading Latin Easternfigures. It is surely no accident that, whilst
Blanche was trying to arrange this, it was one of her leading supporters
within Champagne, John of Brienne, who emerged as the king-elect
of Jerusalem. Indeed, it is believable that Blanche suggested him as a
candidate to help her achieve her goals.
Although a number of question marks still hang around the selection
process, it seems that John’s name wasfirst formally proposed in the
Latin East itself, rather than recommended to the Jerusalemites by King
Philip Augustus of France. It is not difficult to identify the keyfigure in
the Levant who would have promoted John’s candidacy. Walter of
Montbéliard’s rise in the Latin East, after leaving Count Walter III in
(^80) Ibid.,37–9.
48 Breakthrough and High Point (c. 1191–1237)