General Notes

Fulk V, Count of Anjou, was born 1092, and was Count 1109-1142. He married 1st Ermengarde, daughter of Helias, Count of Maine, and had by her his heir, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, Helias, who became Count of Maine or Mayenne, and two daughters, Sybilla and Matilda. He married 2nd Melesenda, daughter of Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, and became King of Jerusalem at the death of his father-in-law Sept. 4, 1131. Fulk V was son of Bertrada de Montford, who eventually deserted her husband and became the mistress of Philip I of France. Fulk became Count of Anjou in 1109, and showed himself a doughty opponent to Henry I, King of England, against whom he continually supported Louis VI of France until, in 1127, Henry I won him over by betrothing his daughter Matilda to Fulk's son Geoffrey Plantagenet. Already in 1120 Fulk V had visited the Holy Land and became a close friend of the Templars. On his return he assigned to the Order of the Templars an annual subsidy, while he also maintained two knights in the Holy Land for a year. In 1128 he was preparing to return to the East when he received an embassy from Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, who had no male heir to succeed him, offering his daughter Melisinda in marriage, with the right of eventual succession to the kingdom. Fulk accepted the offer, and in 1129 he came and married Melisinda, receiving the towns of Acre and Tyre as her dower. In 1131, when Baldwin died, he became King of Jerusalem. His reign is not marked by any considerable events; the kingdom which had reached its zenith under Baldwin II, and did not begin to decline till the capture of Edessa in the reign of Baldwin III, was quietly prosperous under his rule. In the beginning of his reign he had to act as Regent of Antioch, and provide a husband, Raymond of Poitou, for the infant heiress Constance, daughter of Bohemund. (Her 2nd husband was Raymond of Chatillion). Twice in Fulk's reign the Eastern Emperor John Comnenus appeared in northern Syria, in 1137 and 1142, but his coming did not affect the King, who was able to decline politely a visit which the Emperor proposed to make to Jerusalem. In 1143 he died, leaving two sons by Melisande, who both became Kings of Jerusalem, as Baldwin III and Almaric I. Fulk had continued the tradition of good statesmanship and sound churchmanship which Melisande's father and grandfather, Baldwin I and II had begun. His son by his first wife succeeded him as Count of Anjou.