Baldwin IV of Jerusalem may well have been the single greatest badass the Crusaders ever produced: not only did he beat the hell out of Saladin while still a teenager, but he did it while being eaten alive with leprosy. As a leper, though, he was fated to die young (he died at 23 or 24 and even that was beating expectations) and he had no children. His heirs apparent were his two sisters Sybilla and Isabella, both of whom had plausible claims on the throne and both of whom were married to weak noblemen.
IOTL, Baldwin tried to square this circle by naming his nephew as his successor and appointing a strong regent. But the nephew, Baldwin V, lived only a year longer than he did, dying at the age of nine. Sybilla and her husband Guy of Lusignan then maneuvered their way into power, creating dissension and rifts within the Frankish nobility that resulted in the collapse of the truce with Saladin and the defeat at Hattin.
But suppose that Baldwin decided not to appoint his nephew - after all, he was a boy, and regencies are always periods of contention and weakness - and instead went outside the royal family to name a strong adult as the next king? There were several possible candidates and, after all, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was nominally an elective monarchy in which the Haut Cour could select the next king from outside the ruling dynasty.
The first question, obviously, is whether Baldwin would have been strong enough to pull it off. I suspect he would have - though he was clearly dying by then, he had powerful supporters and his victories gave him a great deal of moral authority. If so, what happens next? Would a King Raymond or a King Balian, for instance, have been able to prevent Reynald of Chatillon from breaking the truce or at least to fight Saladin on better ground? Would the next succession, carrying the possibility of a contentious succession among a much wider field, have been a breaking point? Assuming that the K of J did manage to survive past Saladin's death in 1193, how long could it have forestalled inevitable defeat at the hands of the Ayyubids or Mamelukes?
IOTL, Baldwin tried to square this circle by naming his nephew as his successor and appointing a strong regent. But the nephew, Baldwin V, lived only a year longer than he did, dying at the age of nine. Sybilla and her husband Guy of Lusignan then maneuvered their way into power, creating dissension and rifts within the Frankish nobility that resulted in the collapse of the truce with Saladin and the defeat at Hattin.
But suppose that Baldwin decided not to appoint his nephew - after all, he was a boy, and regencies are always periods of contention and weakness - and instead went outside the royal family to name a strong adult as the next king? There were several possible candidates and, after all, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was nominally an elective monarchy in which the Haut Cour could select the next king from outside the ruling dynasty.
The first question, obviously, is whether Baldwin would have been strong enough to pull it off. I suspect he would have - though he was clearly dying by then, he had powerful supporters and his victories gave him a great deal of moral authority. If so, what happens next? Would a King Raymond or a King Balian, for instance, have been able to prevent Reynald of Chatillon from breaking the truce or at least to fight Saladin on better ground? Would the next succession, carrying the possibility of a contentious succession among a much wider field, have been a breaking point? Assuming that the K of J did manage to survive past Saladin's death in 1193, how long could it have forestalled inevitable defeat at the hands of the Ayyubids or Mamelukes?
