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Description
Guy de Lusignan (pronounced “ghee”, because only the French could name their children something so reductive and still get mad at you for mispronouncing it) was one of the many Crusaders making a bid to be King of Jerusalem, a title which sounds a lot more impressive and important than it actually was.

Indistinguishable from the thousands of other Frankish nobles with stupid names and stupid titles from this time period, not much is recorded about Guy's life prior to his arrival in the Holy Land. His father, Hugh VIII, Lord of the French town of Lusignan, had been taken prisoner in the Battle of Harim against Nur ad-Din in 1164, and since we know he died in captivity, Guy and his siblings must've been born some time before that. The 13th century History of William the Marshal, meanwhile, purports that Guy's first step into relevancy was in 1168, when he and his brother Geoffrey ganged up on and murdered Earl Patrick of Salisbury (uncle of the aforementioned William Marshal). Apparently they were pissed off over some petty land dispute with King Henry II and thought they could get some leverage by kidnapping his queen, Eleanor, whom Patrick and William were bodyguarding. Their revolt ended up merging with that of Henry's sons in 1173, but every single prince involved in that plot got their asses handed to them. One son, Richard, managed to kiss enough of his father's rear end to get off with a slap on the wrist and a new gig suppressing all of these leftover rebels. This meant he had to have what must've been one hell of an awkward meeting with the Lusignans wherein he exiled them from Aquitaine as if they hadn't all just fought shoulder to shoulder to overthrow the king.

Guy was therefore forced to take his fucks elsewhere, though where exactly is unclear. As far as I could find, there's no record of his life between this incident and his marriage to Sibylla in 1180. Sibylla, as it happened, was the sister of Baldwin IV, King of Jerusalem, a man so poxxed with leprosy that it was only a matter of time before the vultures would descend on his throne. Through Sibylla, Baldwin had a nephew to succeed him upon his death in 1185, but Baldwin V didn't even make it to puberty, which meant that Jerusalem was basically the prize of whoever could marry Sibylla fastest, and that of course had been Guy. Since no one really liked Guy, though, a compromise was reached wherein he'd simply serve as regent while his wife was crowned sole monarch of Jerusalem. Of course, standing that close to the throne without being king is enough to get anyone's OCD in a twist, so before her son's body was even cold, Sibylla kicked over the entire house of cards by just crowning Guy king there and then. One of his rival nobles, Raymond III, was so pissed off at this move that when he failed to get Sibylla's sister Isabella to start a rebellion, he went to Saladin himself to try and get Guy removed, because let's never forget: the only thing the Crusaders hated more than Muslims was one another.

Saladin, of course, was more than happy to play these dumbass Frankish fucks against one another. It gave him the opportunity to mount his forces and lay his trap. It's only here that the Crusaders stopped bickering and went “oh yeah we were supposed to be here to retake the Holy Land or whatever”, and it was too little too late. Saladin annihilated Guy’s army at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, and took the man himself prisoner. Saladin, ever the generous host, offered Guy a nice frosty glass of ice water, the universal gesture of protection in the unforgiving desert. Guy, suffering from heat stroke in this hellish place, chugged it down, and offered what was left to his fellow captive Raynald of Châtillon. Saladin, however, interfered. He'd given Guy that glass because he respected him as a king and a soldier. He had expressly not given it to Raynald, a selfish butcher of a tyrant who'd disregarded every truce that had been made between the Ayyubids and Crusaders just to line his pockets with stolen gold. The only thing Saladin offered Raynald was a single choice: convert to Islam and repent for his wicked ways, or die. Raynald made his decision, so Saladin cut off his head right there in front of Guy. Guy was, understandably, scared shitless, but Saladin was a man who kept his promises. “A king,” the sultan declared, “does not kill a king.”

Guy enjoyed Saladin’s hospitality as his prisoner for about a year until Saladin, often generous to the point of naivete, released him on the condition that Guy pinky promise to never ever take up arms against the sultan ever again. Guy really should've taken the hint after seeing his friend's decapitated corpse spilling blood all over Saladin’s nice carpet, but hey I guess he'd come all this way to be King of Jerusalem and he wasn't about to give up now. The universe tried to warn him. Reclaiming his crown was an uphill battle from the start. He made his way to the fortress of Tyre to ask them for help restoring the rightful king of Jerusalem. Unfortunately for him, the man in charge of Tyre was Conrad of Montferrat, who had also come all this way to be King of Jerusalem. Conrad informed Guy that they already got one, farted in his general direction, and instructed him to go away on the threat of being taunted a second time. An extremely frustrated Guy fucked right off, presumably grumbling something along the lines of, “Fine, ur clubhouse is gay, I didn't wanna join anyway,” and set about trying to find a clubhouse of his own.

Surely there must've been better options than rolling up to a well-supplied enemy stronghold and trying to brute force it out of their hands, but that's what Guy did anyway. He initiated the Siege of Acre in August 1189, only to then be besieged by Saladin shortly thereafter. Saladin probably could've just wiped Guy off the map there and then, but he hadn't yet heard the news that Guy's backup, the Holy Roman Emperor, had drowned in a river on his way to the Levant like a little bitch. Both sides dug in, but since their camps both had access to the sea, they kinda just… kept besieging one another for two years straight until someone else showed up to break the tie. That someone would ultimately be King Richard the Lionheart, yes the same Richard who had exiled Guy from France in the first place, don't question it. He'd gotten a little sidetracked completely reshaping the politics of the Mediterranean islands, but he finally got there in July 1191 and sent Saladin to bed without supper. Guy finally had his base of operations, hurray! Except… one small problem… again. Sibylla and her daughters had died of the epidemic that swept through the Crusader camp at Acre in 1190, and since Guy's only claim to the throne was through his marriage to Sibylla, he was, quite literally, royally fucked.

Upon Sibylla's death, the crown went to her sister Isabella, so really it was a race to see who could marry her first. I mean… she was already happily married to someone but hey, women didn't get to have opinions back then. Conrad beat everyone to the punch by kidnapping her away from her husband, forcibly annulling her marriage, and slipped in to fill the void like a total asshole. Even chroniclers who liked Conrad agree that this was a dick move, but Conrad was the one with all the money and powerful friends so when the time came to vote once and for all who the nobles wanted to be King of Jerusalem in April 1192, they chose Conrad. Guy of course got all huffy and went bitching to King Richard like “duuuuuude do something!” Richard, though, really just wanted to go home at this point, and this pissing match was seriously hampering his ability to do that. So, what he did was conspire with the Nizari Assassins to get Conrad shivved to death four days before his coronation, then got his nephew Henry elected to the throne instead. I can only assume the scene that followed involved Guy just kinda staring slack jawed and defeated while Richard comes in and puts an elbow on his shoulder like “ah well that sucks buddy, big sad, so sorry. But hey, how bout I sell the island of Cyprus to ya as a consolation prize? I tried leasing it out to the Templars, but they couldn't handle it, and it's not like I'm gonna use it for anything”. Then for comedic effect I like to imagine Guy maintaining that silent slouch and dropped jaw all the way to Limassol and maybe a short montage of him standing around like that while performing all his Cypriot duties. Poor Squidward.

There's not really that much information out there about Guy's reign on Cyprus, but there weren't any popular uprisings, so clearly he was doing something better than the Templars. Technically speaking, he wasn't even the King of Cyprus, just its Lord under King Richard’s jurisdiction, and since Guy didn't know when to quit while he's ahead, that simply wouldn't do. His brother, Aimery, was still Constable of Jerusalem under King Henry, and had some sway over the city's influential Pisan population, so maaaaayyyybe he could've worked out a way to wrench Tyre out of Henry's hands like a rotten tooth? Maybe, but we'll never know, because Henry got suspicious of Aimery's loyalties and locked him up in 1193. He was released after a few days though, and decided to go crying to his big brother in Cyprus, where Guy appointed him ruler of Jaffa. It should be noted that Guy didn't actually… own Jaffa to begin with, but I mean he also continued to demand he be referred to as King of Jerusalem until his dying breath, so I can't really say his audacity surprises me at this point. His last day on Earth was some point in 1194, we don't actually know when. Apparently the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre just sort of says something along the lines of “and then he died” shortly after describing the Pisan conspiracy, but I've mentioned before how I couldn't find an English translation of this damn thing, so we'll just have to trust the Internet on this. Lots of websites and books will provide a specific date like April or July, but I can't seem to dig up a primary source on any of these claims. I assume they're working backwards from the start of his brother's reign over Cyprus, but idk. Whatever the case, he was buried at the church in Nicosia, and since he had no heirs of his own, the island went to Aimery, whose descendants would continue to rule Cyprus until the Venetians took over in 1489. So… I guess something came out of all this eventually?

Design notes, this was another one that was pretty straightforward. I could only find two historical depictions of Guy that were satisfactorily detailed for my purposes: the more famous portrait painted by François-Édouard Picot circa 1845, and a 1954 piece by Syrian painter Said Tahsin depicting Guy's surrender to Saladin. I took the armor and tunic from the Tahsin painting and supplemented it with the cape, sword, and headshot from the Picot portrait. I actually wasn't too sure I wanted to include the cape at first. Don't get me wrong, as an artist, I love capes. They help me cheat by not having to redraw on the back whatever complicated design the front has XD There's a time and a place for them, though, and initially I thought it was gonna be too clunky. But then I sketched it on just to see and I realized no no, that is exactly the appropriate level of douchebag for Guy de Lusignan. Incorporating those floral patterns Picot drew into the fabric was a royal pain in the ass, but I think I pulled it off quite nicely. For once, something relating to Guy went according to plan.

Description
Guy de Lusignan (pronounced “ghee”, because only the French could name their children something so reductive and still get mad at you for mispronouncing it) was one of the many Crusaders making a bid to be King of Jerusalem, a title which sounds a lot more impressive and important than it actually was.

Indistinguishable from the thousands of other Frankish nobles with stupid names and stupid titles from this time period, not much is recorded about Guy's life prior to his arrival in the Holy Land. His father, Hugh VIII, Lord of the French town of Lusignan, had been taken prisoner in the Battle of Harim against Nur ad-Din in 1164, and since we know he died in captivity, Guy and his siblings must've been born some time before that. The 13th century History of William the Marshal, meanwhile, purports that Guy's first step into relevancy was in 1168, when he and his brother Geoffrey ganged up on and murdered Earl Patrick of Salisbury (uncle of the aforementioned William Marshal). Apparently they were pissed off over some petty land dispute with King Henry II and thought they could get some leverage by kidnapping his queen, Eleanor, whom Patrick and William were bodyguarding. Their revolt ended up merging with that of Henry's sons in 1173, but every single prince involved in that plot got their asses handed to them. One son, Richard, managed to kiss enough of his father's rear end to get off with a slap on the wrist and a new gig suppressing all of these leftover rebels. This meant he had to have what must've been one hell of an awkward meeting with the Lusignans wherein he exiled them from Aquitaine as if they hadn't all just fought shoulder to shoulder to overthrow the king.

Guy was therefore forced to take his fucks elsewhere, though where exactly is unclear. As far as I could find, there's no record of his life between this incident and his marriage to Sibylla in 1180. Sibylla, as it happened, was the sister of Baldwin IV, King of Jerusalem, a man so poxxed with leprosy that it was only a matter of time before the vultures would descend on his throne. Through Sibylla, Baldwin had a nephew to succeed him upon his death in 1185, but Baldwin V didn't even make it to puberty, which meant that Jerusalem was basically the prize of whoever could marry Sibylla fastest, and that of course had been Guy. Since no one really liked Guy, though, a compromise was reached wherein he'd simply serve as regent while his wife was crowned sole monarch of Jerusalem. Of course, standing that close to the throne without being king is enough to get anyone's OCD in a twist, so before her son's body was even cold, Sibylla kicked over the entire house of cards by just crowning Guy king there and then. One of his rival nobles, Raymond III, was so pissed off at this move that when he failed to get Sibylla's sister Isabella to start a rebellion, he went to Saladin himself to try and get Guy removed, because let's never forget: the only thing the Crusaders hated more than Muslims was one another.

Saladin, of course, was more than happy to play these dumbass Frankish fucks against one another. It gave him the opportunity to mount his forces and lay his trap. It's only here that the Crusaders stopped bickering and went “oh yeah we were supposed to be here to retake the Holy Land or whatever”, and it was too little too late. Saladin annihilated Guy’s army at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, and took the man himself prisoner. Saladin, ever the generous host, offered Guy a nice frosty glass of ice water, the universal gesture of protection in the unforgiving desert. Guy, suffering from heat stroke in this hellish place, chugged it down, and offered what was left to his fellow captive Raynald of Châtillon. Saladin, however, interfered. He'd given Guy that glass because he respected him as a king and a soldier. He had expressly not given it to Raynald, a selfish butcher of a tyrant who'd disregarded every truce that had been made between the Ayyubids and Crusaders just to line his pockets with stolen gold. The only thing Saladin offered Raynald was a single choice: convert to Islam and repent for his wicked ways, or die. Raynald made his decision, so Saladin cut off his head right there in front of Guy. Guy was, understandably, scared shitless, but Saladin was a man who kept his promises. “A king,” the sultan declared, “does not kill a king.”

Guy enjoyed Saladin’s hospitality as his prisoner for about a year until Saladin, often generous to the point of naivete, released him on the condition that Guy pinky promise to never ever take up arms against the sultan ever again. Guy really should've taken the hint after seeing his friend's decapitated corpse spilling blood all over Saladin’s nice carpet, but hey I guess he'd come all this way to be King of Jerusalem and he wasn't about to give up now. The universe tried to warn him. Reclaiming his crown was an uphill battle from the start. He made his way to the fortress of Tyre to ask them for help restoring the rightful king of Jerusalem. Unfortunately for him, the man in charge of Tyre was Conrad of Montferrat, who had also come all this way to be King of Jerusalem. Conrad informed Guy that they already got one, farted in his general direction, and instructed him to go away on the threat of being taunted a second time. An extremely frustrated Guy fucked right off, presumably grumbling something along the lines of, “Fine, ur clubhouse is gay, I didn't wanna join anyway,” and set about trying to find a clubhouse of his own.

Surely there must've been better options than rolling up to a well-supplied enemy stronghold and trying to brute force it out of their hands, but that's what Guy did anyway. He initiated the Siege of Acre in August 1189, only to then be besieged by Saladin shortly thereafter. Saladin probably could've just wiped Guy off the map there and then, but he hadn't yet heard the news that Guy's backup, the Holy Roman Emperor, had drowned in a river on his way to the Levant like a little bitch. Both sides dug in, but since their camps both had access to the sea, they kinda just… kept besieging one another for two years straight until someone else showed up to break the tie. That someone would ultimately be King Richard the Lionheart, yes the same Richard who had exiled Guy from France in the first place, don't question it. He'd gotten a little sidetracked completely reshaping the politics of the Mediterranean islands, but he finally got there in July 1191 and sent Saladin to bed without supper. Guy finally had his base of operations, hurray! Except… one small problem… again. Sibylla and her daughters had died of the epidemic that swept through the Crusader camp at Acre in 1190, and since Guy's only claim to the throne was through his marriage to Sibylla, he was, quite literally, royally fucked.

Upon Sibylla's death, the crown went to her sister Isabella, so really it was a race to see who could marry her first. I mean… she was already happily married to someone but hey, women didn't get to have opinions back then. Conrad beat everyone to the punch by kidnapping her away from her husband, forcibly annulling her marriage, and slipped in to fill the void like a total asshole. Even chroniclers who liked Conrad agree that this was a dick move, but Conrad was the one with all the money and powerful friends so when the time came to vote once and for all who the nobles wanted to be King of Jerusalem in April 1192, they chose Conrad. Guy of course got all huffy and went bitching to King Richard like “duuuuuude do something!” Richard, though, really just wanted to go home at this point, and this pissing match was seriously hampering his ability to do that. So, what he did was conspire with the Nizari Assassins to get Conrad shivved to death four days before his coronation, then got his nephew Henry elected to the throne instead. I can only assume the scene that followed involved Guy just kinda staring slack jawed and defeated while Richard comes in and puts an elbow on his shoulder like “ah well that sucks buddy, big sad, so sorry. But hey, how bout I sell the island of Cyprus to ya as a consolation prize? I tried leasing it out to the Templars, but they couldn't handle it, and it's not like I'm gonna use it for anything”. Then for comedic effect I like to imagine Guy maintaining that silent slouch and dropped jaw all the way to Limassol and maybe a short montage of him standing around like that while performing all his Cypriot duties. Poor Squidward.

There's not really that much information out there about Guy's reign on Cyprus, but there weren't any popular uprisings, so clearly he was doing something better than the Templars. Technically speaking, he wasn't even the King of Cyprus, just its Lord under King Richard’s jurisdiction, and since Guy didn't know when to quit while he's ahead, that simply wouldn't do. His brother, Aimery, was still Constable of Jerusalem under King Henry, and had some sway over the city's influential Pisan population, so maaaaayyyybe he could've worked out a way to wrench Tyre out of Henry's hands like a rotten tooth? Maybe, but we'll never know, because Henry got suspicious of Aimery's loyalties and locked him up in 1193. He was released after a few days though, and decided to go crying to his big brother in Cyprus, where Guy appointed him ruler of Jaffa. It should be noted that Guy didn't actually… own Jaffa to begin with, but I mean he also continued to demand he be referred to as King of Jerusalem until his dying breath, so I can't really say his audacity surprises me at this point. His last day on Earth was some point in 1194, we don't actually know when. Apparently the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre just sort of says something along the lines of “and then he died” shortly after describing the Pisan conspiracy, but I've mentioned before how I couldn't find an English translation of this damn thing, so we'll just have to trust the Internet on this. Lots of websites and books will provide a specific date like April or July, but I can't seem to dig up a primary source on any of these claims. I assume they're working backwards from the start of his brother's reign over Cyprus, but idk. Whatever the case, he was buried at the church in Nicosia, and since he had no heirs of his own, the island went to Aimery, whose descendants would continue to rule Cyprus until the Venetians took over in 1489. So… I guess something came out of all this eventually?

Design notes, this was another one that was pretty straightforward. I could only find two historical depictions of Guy that were satisfactorily detailed for my purposes: the more famous portrait painted by François-Édouard Picot circa 1845, and a 1954 piece by Syrian painter Said Tahsin depicting Guy's surrender to Saladin. I took the armor and tunic from the Tahsin painting and supplemented it with the cape, sword, and headshot from the Picot portrait. I actually wasn't too sure I wanted to include the cape at first. Don't get me wrong, as an artist, I love capes. They help me cheat by not having to redraw on the back whatever complicated design the front has XD There's a time and a place for them, though, and initially I thought it was gonna be too clunky. But then I sketched it on just to see and I realized no no, that is exactly the appropriate level of douchebag for Guy de Lusignan. Incorporating those floral patterns Picot drew into the fabric was a royal pain in the ass, but I think I pulled it off quite nicely. For once, something relating to Guy went according to plan.