Modern Kingdom of Jerusalem?

Was it possible for the Kingdom of Jerusalem to survive into the modern day with it's 1135 borders or larger? Preferably with a POD before the third crusade.
Bonus points if the other crusader states survive and/or new ones are formed.
Double bonus points if they reach WW1 without the Ottomans having conquered them.
 
It's hard. To do it you need to manipulate certain events that weren't very likely at the time. Many would, for instance, point to the attempted alliance with the Mongols as a good POD, but I personally have my doubts as to whether the Mongols would ever have seriously entertained an alliance, and whether they wouldn't have just mopped up the Crusader states in a classic backstab even if they would ally against the Muslims first. Problem is while there are serious states on the borders of the Crusader Kingdoms they are going to be under constant threat for their own existence. You'd need to find a way to make sure all the Islamic states around them constantly failed to build up, which isn't easy considering you're trying to keep these states alive for 900 years - that's a long time for the Muslim nations to totally fail to get their act together. Killing off or butterflying Saladin would be a big start, but it would only be that - a start. You also want to ensure that the Mongols don't hang around in the area, and when they leave they aren't replaced with a new large state - the Timurid Empire or whatever would be a new major threat for example.

It could be done, but to do it well might require the Crusader States to have so many turns of luck in how disorganised their neighbours are that the outside observer living in that world would say "it's as if they get every single lucky roll of the dice". In short, it may not seem a very likely scenario when completed.
 
Was it possible for the Kingdom of Jerusalem to survive into the modern day with it's 1135 borders or larger? Preferably with a POD before the third crusade.
Bonus points if the other crusader states survive and/or new ones are formed.
Double bonus points if they reach WW1 without the Ottomans having conquered them.

OK,
The only way is to make the Crusader States unify in a Confederation to fight the Muslims.
Use the Black Death to weaken the Muslims
 
OK,
The only way is to make the Crusader States unify in a Confederation to fight the Muslims.
Use the Black Death to weaken the Muslims

The Black Death would be pretty devastating to the Crusader States too. These were states with real small Christian populations, after all. They would be utterly dependent on European nations to defend them in that period, and the European nations would likely as not refuse to send armies because of the devastation of the plague on their own Kingdoms - not to mention if the plague hasn't hit Europe yet, not Christian King will want to march his army into a contaminated zone and watch his soldiers first get slaughtered by the buboes and then bring it home with their survivors.
 
How about the early death of Armenian princess Arda, the second wife of Baldwin I? So then his marriage with Adelaide del Vasto, considered bigamous by the Roman Church, won't be annulled in 1117. Perhaps after Baldwin's death the crown of Jerusalem goes to Adelaide's son, Count Roger II of Sicily. Imagine what he may do as the ruler of one of the Crusader states.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Double bonus points if they reach WW1 without the Ottomans having conquered them.

If the Kingdom of Jerusalem had survived, butterflies would ensure that there would be no Ottoman Empire, much less a WWI in anything like the form we recognize.
 
In that light, wouldn't one possible PoD by a surviving Byzantine Empire? One that is strong enough to survive but weak enough to need Jerusalem as a buffer state.
 
In that light, wouldn't one possible PoD by a surviving Byzantine Empire? One that is strong enough to survive but weak enough to need Jerusalem as a buffer state.

POD post-first crusade, I assume; no Fourth Crusade can help it, and a King of Jerusalem who would prefer working with the Romans instead of the "Franks" could do.
 
What if Muslims weren't second-class citizens and were loyal to the crown?
Or if more people who went on the Crusades stayed there instead of returning to Europe, providing a larger population to fight any invaders.
 
maybe have thousands of christian settlers come and help stregthen the kingdom?

Another idea would have Louis IX (or was it VII?) take Damascus on the Second Crusade.

Even better still, Fredrick Barbosa doesn't drown on the way to the holy land, and his massive army conquers back the lost crusader territories, and then even more.

A more realistic apporach would have hte Kingdom of Jerusalem maintain the coast, or maybe just Acre.
 
If the Kingdom of Jerusalem had survived, butterflies would ensure that there would be no Ottoman Empire, much less a WWI in anything like the form we recognize.

According to the conventions of this site, a TL with KoJ and also a recognizable WWI would have to be in ASB.

And there'd a much stronger case for doing so than in many good timelines that get relegated there. In general I argue that "butterflies" can be offset by "anti-butterflies;" since the "butterfly" argument rests on events and choices that are diverted by mere chaos, one can argue that in the indescribably many timelines diverging from any POD, even an ancient one (even more so from an ancient one) one can choose to look at a timeline where the merely chaotic variations happened to vary back toward something recognizable, so the "different sperm meet the eggs, Oxford never gets built" arguments can be circumvented.

But not so much when systematic effects of the POD would systematically change downtime conditions. If the KoJ survives for instance, even as a small state largely isolated from Western European events, it will massively distort events in the Muslim core zone and hence Eastern Europe; as you say the Ottoman regime itself--if not simply "butterflied" away--we can choose the timelines where the Osmanli family nevertheless leads a Turkish alliance that finally conquers Constantinople, even on schedule if we like--is still going to be very different. Presumably after (or just as likely before) taking Constantinople, they or any group aspiring to claim to rule in the name of all Islam will strive to dislodge this remnant of infidel Europeanism from their Holy Land! If they succeed as seems far most likely, no KoJ--if they fail, it becomes an irritating rock in the stream of history causing major turbulence. A different Ottoman regime therefore, with different impacts on southeast Europe (and beyond).

It's pretty hard to see how the Kingdom of Jerusalem could co-exist with anything recognizable--screw the butterflies, the systematic effects are overwhelming!

In that light, wouldn't one possible PoD by a surviving Byzantine Empire? One that is strong enough to survive but weak enough to need Jerusalem as a buffer state.

Well, that was Emperor Manuel's idea I believe. Actually all he wanted was a contingent of Western European mercenaries to take back land in Anatolia; this "crusade" pretty much horrified him and it was all he could do to get rid of them by sending them against Antioch and as many points south of there as they cared to take!

Ironically, in addition to persecuting Muslims and Jews, the Crusader realms also treated Orthodox Christians as heretics. They were able to ally with and more or less recruit even more heterodox (from a Latin point of view) local Christian sects that were not united with the Orthodox. But the Orthodox were by definition loyal to the Greek hierarchy and that made them anathema to the Latins.

So, unless we have a very different course of events even during the First Crusade (such as a prior agreement to respect Orthodox religious authority, which would undercut much of the motivation of both Rome and the various ambitious feudal-origined Latin high churchmen who came along), a strong Byzantium is going to be seen more as a problem than a solution by Latin Crusader states. And vice versa; rather than working with them, the Eastern Empire will be seeking to dislodge them!

POD post-first crusade, I assume; no Fourth Crusade can help it, and a King of Jerusalem who would prefer working with the Romans instead of the "Franks" could do.

Actually, one thing I learned about so-called Crusader Kingdoms, especially the KoJ in a class I took on the subject, was that very soon after the First Crusade, the "Franks" who stayed in the East quickly came to regard new Crusaders as much more of a problem than a solution. Whatever they brought in manpower was more than offset by the fact that first of all most of them would be going away again soon, and meanwhile their enthusiasms, ambitions, and ignorance of conditions on the ground tended to disrupt any alliances and understandings with local powers the residents Outremar had delicately and painfully evolved. They'd come barging in, upset the applecart, denounce the locals as sellouts and betrayers of true Christendom, and then (if they were lucky enough to survive the hornet's nests they tended to stir up) sail off home again, leaving those who lived there to deal with wrecked alliances with no more manpower than they'd started with.

What if Muslims weren't second-class citizens and were loyal to the crown?

That would have been nice. Nice if they hadn't massacred the Jews too.

But what, in the minds of the truly mass and grass-roots movement that was the First Crusade, was the motive of this mixed but largely peasant mob but to extirpate the infidel from the Holy Land and see the New Jerusalem cleansed of heathendom (as they saw it) rise and shine in the Glory of God, and who knows, perhaps signal the coming New Millenium of the Kingdom of God? Why set off on this hard and for many ultimately fatal journey from which they probably would never return, if not for some such dramatic outcome?

The subsequent Crusades never quite matched the First Crusade--for one thing, only the First had anything like its stunning succession of victories. I think a lot of that was shock in the Muslim world that had never looked for anything like this coming from the West. But then, just about everyone involved was amazed at the nature of the Crusade as it evolved before their eyes. No one in Western Europe expected so many commoners to drop everything and march off east; no one planned for hungry mobs learning the ways of contemporary warfare as they marched passing through their territories; Emperor Manuel as I said was pretty astonished at what he got! When this mob entered the zone of recent Muslim conquests no one there had any idea what to expect of them either.

Later Crusades were more "organized" in the light of this disturbing experience, more under the control of their noble leadership and with more understandings among European powers-that-were about how they'd conduct themselves. This, I suspect, as much as the fact that the Muslim targets of the Crusades knew much more from rumor and experience what they were dealing with, blunted their effectiveness.

For the First Crusade to have been much different than it was--well, if the initiators got what they wanted, it wouldn't have been a Crusade at all. No one really controlled the whole process. But their effectiveness, however labeled, depended on having a whole mass of enthusiastic if ill-trained foot soldiers, and medieval enthusiasm tended to equal brutal bigotry.

Or if more people who went on the Crusades stayed there instead of returning to Europe, providing a larger population to fight any invaders.

I believe that among the commoner mass that formed the main punch of the First Crusade, most of them did stay. They saw themselves as elevated in social status, stepping into the niches of merchant and landlord that they'd vacated for themselves at bloody swordpoint--this is one reason the policy of non-cooperation with Muslims and Jews continued; the invaders had largely taken their places. Among the nobles, some stayed, some went home--a lot of the nobility of Outremer was actually developed during the Crusade, arising from men who had been nobody when they set out. But actually that was largely true of the nobility of Europe in general this generation--go back 50 years and you wouldn't find the same bands of brigands running things. This was the beginning of the Medieval era as such, and the formation of the noble houses was part of that beginning.

Anyway the Kingdom of Jerusalem and I believe its counterparts--Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli--hung on to the manpower they judged they needed and had suitable places for; if some Crusaders went home it was because their prospects looked better there to them than in the new kingdoms.

If there were no subsequent Crusades but instead a steady trickle of ambitious immigrants, that might have been better. The later Crusades however were in response to drastic failures and reverses the existing realms suffered; those particular plagues of locusts only descended on them after they'd already blown it somehow.
 
Minor nitpick: Alexius, not Manuel.

I'm not sure the Byzantines necessarily want to throw the Crusaders out entirely. Palestine hasn't been in Byzantine hands even tenuously since John I. If the Franks want to control that, fine. Syria, however, is another problem. Antioch should have been turned over to the Byzantines to begin with.

Also, its not as if "the Muslims" are necessarily a united force - even with their act together, Syria (Damascus, in this case, not Antioch) and Egypt may be two different powers which may or may not both want to see the Franks utterly crushed.

The problem is Jerusalem. Jerusalem in Christian hands may or may not be completely unacceptable, though it would probably come off as a cause for friction with some groups and individuals no matter what is done.

But the Kingdom of Jerusalem, no matter what strategic and tactical alliances it makes with various emirs, is a state denying Muslims Jerusalem - look at what was done to the Dome of the Rock. This is going to grate.

So while a sorta-Frankish state in the area is not implausible, I think the Kingdom of Jerusalem as we think of it would be incapable of surviving the fact that it will always be a target.
 
So while a sorta-Frankish state in the area is not implausible, I think the Kingdom of Jerusalem as we think of it would be incapable of surviving the fact that it will always be a target.

What if Jerusalem were to go on the "offensive" against the Muslim powers surrounding them? Perhaps with the aid of a crusade or two?
Aggressively expanding and converting the local populations. Creating more crusader states in the process.
 
What if Jerusalem were to go on the "offensive" against the Muslim powers surrounding them? Perhaps with the aid of a crusade or two?
Aggressively expanding and converting the local populations. Creating more crusader states in the process.

How in the name of the Highly Partial Powers Above is it going to do that?

We know how well this worked in the 2nd Crusade and when the Prince of Antioch and Count of Edessa didn't cooperate with John II.

I'm not saying its completely impossible, but I'm not sure how its going to do it. And converting the local populations? How is it going to do that? That is even harder to believe than that it could say, take Damascus.

Whether it is aggressive or not, it will be a target. It needs to do something about being seen as a state that throws sand in the eyes of the Faithful.
 
Ironically, in addition to persecuting Muslims and Jews, the Crusader realms also treated Orthodox Christians as heretics. They were able to ally with and more or less recruit even more heterodox (from a Latin point of view) local Christian sects that were not united with the Orthodox. But the Orthodox were by definition loyal to the Greek hierarchy and that made them anathema to the Latins.

So, unless we have a very different course of events even during the First Crusade (such as a prior agreement to respect Orthodox religious authority, which would undercut much of the motivation of both Rome and the various ambitious feudal-origined Latin high churchmen who came along), a strong Byzantium is going to be seen more as a problem than a solution by Latin Crusader states. And vice versa; rather than working with them, the Eastern Empire will be seeking to dislodge them!
You mean Alexius. Manuel distrusted the Crusaders but he loved the west and generally took a more hands off approach to Antioch until towards the end.

Yes there was persecution but there was also a accommodation. The idea that the Outremer Franks constantly persecuted and exploited the Greek Christians is just as wrong as the idea that they all lived together in a harmonious unified society. For instance the Greek Orthodox priests were given charge of the Holy Fire in Jerusalem after the Latins screwed it up, St. Sabbas was patronized by the kings of Jerusalem, and an archbishop of the Greek church at Gaza actually became a confrater of the Hospitallers.

Regardless, my point about Byzantium was one in which the northern Muslims are too busy with Byzantium (and presumably a vassal Antioch) to provide meaningful assistance to the Egypt so that KoJ survives. There's a balance that can be struck.

Anyway the Kingdom of Jerusalem and I believe its counterparts--Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli--hung on to the manpower they judged they needed and had suitable places for; if some Crusaders went home it was because their prospects looked better there to them than in the new kingdoms.
Considering that the first Crusade was the most explicitly religious one, I disagree with this. Thousands left to resume their lives, not because there was no room for them but because they had come on the Crusade to retake Jerusalem and that had been done (and secured after Ascalon).
 
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I'm only going to say this one more time:

Roger II of Sicily succeeds Baldwin I of Jerusalem through his mother, Adelaide del Vasto, whose' marriage isn't annulled by the Latin Patriarch Arnulf of Chocques as per OTL, due to the untimely early death of Baldwin's other wife, Arda.
 
I'm only going to say this one more time:

Roger II of Sicily succeeds Baldwin I of Jerusalem through his mother, Adelaide del Vasto, whose' marriage isn't annulled by the Latin Patriarch Arnulf of Chocques as per OTL, due to the untimely early death of Baldwin's other wife, Arda.

And...then what?

I don't know enough about Roger to weigh his ability. Or what he can contribute (as King of Sicily). Perhaps you could elaborate on what you think this would mean vs. OTL's outcome?
 
And...then what?

I don't know enough about Roger to weigh his ability. Or what he can contribute (as King of Sicily). Perhaps you could elaborate on what you think this would mean vs. OTL's outcome?

Roger II would be invested as King of Sicily around 1130-31. But before that, the County of Sicily was one of the more wealthy and centralized states in western Europe. He has a formidable navy, which would benefit the Crusader states logistically. Any crusades, or at least other reinforcments could be ferried to the Outremer, rather than take the more difficult route via Byzantine and Turkish territory. Also, Norman Sicily was the most cosmopolitan Christian-ruled state in western Europe, populated not only by Catholics, but Greek Orthodox Christians and Muslims. Both groups being present in the administration of that particular realm. Hence, Roger may be best advised on how to deal diplomatically with Damascus, Aleppo and the other Muslim emirates. IOTL, Roger II was deeply offended when his mother was divorced by Baldwin. He apparently never forgave them that, and wouldn't even volunteer assistance to Jerusalem during the Second Crusade.
 
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