ABSTRACT
There is no evidence that Sybil played any military role during the siege of Acre, but she and Guy together issued concessions and privileges to influential groups whose aid was essential to the siege of Acre, such as the Pisans, who had previously received concessions from Conrad of Montferrat. The witness lists to their documents indicate that they were rebuilding the royal household, comprising leading nobles of the kingdom, royal officials and individuals who had witnessed royal documents before the disasters of 1187. But any hopes Sybil had of rebuilding her kingdom ended with her death in late summer or autumn 1190. The deaths of Sybil and her two surviving daughters left Guy de Lusignan without a claim to the kingdom of Jerusalem except that he was its crowned king. Conrad of Montferrat promptly made a bid for the crown, persuading the leaders of the crusade that the marriage of Sybil’s younger half-sister Isabel to Humphrey IV of Toron was invalid and instigating a divorce. He then married Isabel himself and claimed the kingdom.
Later generations depicted Sybil in vastly different ways, from romantic and faithful wife in the thirteenth century to murderess of her son in the sixteenth. Although she failed to defend her kingdom against Saladin, the kingdom’s weakness in 1187 was largely due to problems that had developed under her brother, King Baldwin IV. In the face of disaster Sybil did not flee but remained in the East to gain her husband’s freedom and continue the fight, thus enabling the kingdom to survive for another century.
