And it was essentially aimed at recapturing for Jerusalem from Islamic rule have been under Islamic rule since the 7th century and urban essentially wanted Jerusalem to become a Christian power again and for the surrounding area to become Christian as well so they achieve this of as you've said in July 10th 99 they captured the city of Jerusalem but then of course the next step was to consolidate this capture if you want to maintain Christian power in the area you need to establish territorial power bases so we have a process of several years of consolidation during which time we have the development of 4 distinct crusade to states as they are now no so the most important of these is at Jerusalem we have a kingdom. Then we have a principality at Antioch and we have 2 counties one at Tripoli and one at adesa. Organise How big was it for a start what sort of place was a Originally it was literally just the city of Jerusalem but then during the reign of Baldwin the 1st he's the 1st king of Jerusalem the territory really expands up to the Mediterranean and takes in a lot of the seaboard idea of population. I don't know precise numbers of population off the top my head although I think one of the things to say is that the numbers of Franks of the ruling class is very small What did they try to create when they came the Crusaders did they should go to greater Kingdom or what do they set out to do it's not it's not clear that they really set out with any absolute ject of in mind but what they did set up was what they were familiar with essentially So they import western forms of jurisdiction law or custom and so on from their own areas in what we would now call France so you have a system whereby the chief man in each of these areas king prince and count he has a load of vassals underneath him who hold land who have obligations and loyalty to him. And they also perform a very important role in advising him they especially for what we would now call a government essentially what would your reaction comparatively few Crusaders' combo to the rest of the population how did they manage to impose their will in the system on Jerusalem and on the other states well they by military might in the 1st instance through just a sheer force I think but then I suppose the various the kind of institutions that they set up for example they import a minority system into the countryside and it's difficult to know I suppose for a lot of local population how much things would have changed just because there was a change in lordship at the top but evidently over a period of about 1015 years it is very successful and they have established themselves this is the replica of the feudal system and then there were. It is except we don't really like the term feudal I don't know of a friend though well if. It's a bit too neat it makes it look as though there's one universal rule that applies across Europe which there wasn't but it is feudal in inverted commas in the sense of being all about land holding and that's what's absolutely crucial Natasha origin minutes on was born after the 1st Crusade which was turned 99 who was her mother and was not important most on the mother is a woman called more fear she's the daughter of Gabriel manatee she's Armenian by birth but Greek Orthodox by religion and this means she's kind of slightly closer to the Frankish religion in some respects. Morphia is significant She's the wife of Baldwin of book so she marries the count of a death or who rules there until 1118 when he follows his previous leads Lord Baldwin of billowing on to the throne Jerusalem becomes queen of Jerusalem for us and so where do we go from the well we think from the sources that suggest that they had a reasonably happy marriage so they had 4 children together 4 daughters the eldest Melissa we think was probably born after 11 o 9 followed fairly closely by silence time after 11 or 911. But the 11 turn or the 5th. And it will do really let me and we lonely kind of judging these things by age of canonical age of marriage they have to be at least 12 before they can get married but everything else may be around $1111.00 and then Hadiya and possibly 111521117 finally if ater the youngest was born around $111920.00 and it's sort of at that time they move so Baldwin becomes king of Jerusalem they all move down together he waits for morphia to arrive before he gets crowned so she's present for the Coronation you don't usually 1st of all that you have a coronation and certainly there's a prankish Christian and an Armenian Christian the other is not regarded there's anything that says well this is unusual and it's good or bad or more She's a Greek Orthodox by religion and that kind of means she's she's a bit closer to the Latin faith and we know very little about her own kind of involvement until personal devotions a lot of what we think we know about comes from Ellison's later preference for certain patronage and those kind of things so I don't think so there were quite a few people who married into established Christian families whether Armenian or Greek Orthodox they brought with them impressive dowry small fears dowry was 50000 gold Besant. Obviously sought help. Measurements which then helped the Crusaders to establish themselves as they were going through this ongoing process of warfare so the money that they brought was important but the links to establish an ability and potential Christian allies were also really important what united the Christians. The Crusader Christians and one divided them there is a lot of rivalry between the Franks in this during this process of settlement here people are seeking to establish their own territories and developing selves. There's also rivalry with indigenous Christian populations over the the important sites of pilgrimage that the Crusaders want access to and certainly you know in some cases other groups of Christians might be treated more 2nd class citizens in some of the Crusader held areas can bring in the religious element in those they came from a Christian purpose did they achieve that Christian purpose what was in there to most historians nowadays except that Jerusalem was the goal of the 1st Crusade it comes across in the crusaded charter and all of those are things but the 1st Crusades when they set out couldn't possibly know that they would have been successful in doing that I mean they they achieved more than they could possibly have thought you know now don't you it was more than that look at the return of the holy city I mean that was the big success of the 1st because it was brought back into Christiane yes it's a Latin Patriarch is established on off of shock is is put in place that the 1st page Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem it is actually last very long because the Pope doesn't approve of that candidate but that's another story this is what's written about time and time again in western Quanah called sort of major success but the problem is then how to hold it with this you know a very small minority of Latins who remain behind because a lot of people go home they see themselves as having fulfilled their duty. It was very hard for campaign and very many of them have responsibilities in the West that they have to return I will. Come back doored than in a moment I want to give one out of Danielle let's turn to Melissa and let's bring her into the pictures the programs about her she's the oldest daughter how did she developed what sources are available for you to tell us about her well the main sources that we have to tell us about her and what she's doing as the queen of Jerry Sloan are the charter as say these are essentially the governmental records of donations of new buildings being established of land grants and they tell us who is involved at a governmental level what they're doing this for and who the witnesses also they tell us who are the key players around the king and queen at a given time and they're always sealed with an image of the king usually on horseback in the Queen usually with either flower and old or of the to fray usually a cork as signs if the secular authorities say really this is about impressing on a permanent record this is a decision that the rule has made this is why it's been made and that it's going to last in perpetuity so that's one of our main governmental records quite a lot of this quite a few of them exist from Vulcan medicines writing and anything else in the sources we also have quite a few letters at least for Les's survive from Abbott but as of Clive I said one of the foremost churchmen of his age very famous is stash an apple it's responsible for the significant amount of preaching on the 2nd crusade and he writes at least 4 letters to her some of them are quite simple Here are some pilgrims I'd like you to take care of here Some pretty much the Tennessean brothers I would like you to look after them but 2 others were written at quite crucial points within her writing one just after the death of her husband's focus on j. And that one tells her that essentially if she should be the queen but in order to be a success. Yes for Queen of Jerusalem without her husband she should really act as a man because then nobody will have any cause to ask where is the king of Jerusalem because the queen is being the king of Jerusalem the Buddha of source regard to go to William of time you see probably the most important source He certainly the most important narrative source that we have say he's a key individual especially by the 1170s he's really coming into his iron by 1170 he is the chief to King I'm our Axon the future king Baldwin the 4th by 1174 he's the chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem so that gives him access to all of those charters in the laws of the kingdom by 1175 he's reached the pinnacle of his ecclesiastical career so he never quite gets the top job that he really wants he never gets to be the Patry Elk of Jerusalem but in 1175 he becomes the Archbishop of Tire series in a significant ecclesiastical role so by 1170 on which when he's writing his history from we think around 1167 he's extremely well placed to know exactly what's going on within the kingdom he seems to be quite close to King America they have quite a few conversations about history but formalisms writing while he tells us that this is the point where he is an eyewitness to the kingdom of Jerusalem and it's events he is probably not actually situated in the East he's probably in the West deceiving his university education so he is the best we don't know most of Europe or the West very few are you know so he's the best that we've got but we have to accept that he comes with a lot of caveats that a lot of what he's working with would essentially be quote gossip the memory of people that were there at the time that he doesn't necessarily have firsthand knowledge. Banishing the those he writes about I think it's definitely a concern because medicine is really a key component of the din estate all of the k. . Things that he's writing about are descended from her she is unusual in that she's a woman in Jerusalem carrying on that line previously it's always gone through the male line say this is the 1st time it goes through the female line and his patron as an author is her 2nd son him out Eric's a very is the possibility that he wouldn't want to offend his patron by telling too many accounts of the misdeeds of his mother or painting him our x. Mother Melissa and in anything less than this paragon of Queen shape we want slightly before a horse to mark a real image Catherine can we say tell people how Mehlis on came to be the Green what happened that this woman became queen of Jerusalem in order to go from the well that the basic answer to that is the bald in the 2nd doesn't have any sons so as we've heard he has 4 daughters and there are attempts I think to get him to remarry when he 1st becomes king and maybe there's a suggestion that he could remarry and father son but he but he doesn't and so by the time we get to the later $1120.00 medicine's about 20 herself at this point clearly she is now being identified as his heir in the chart is that down Danielle mentions we start to have a name associated with Baldwin's and the law permits her to record yes it does yeah and the crucial thing is that the board in the 2nd obviously wants the monarchy to go to his descendants he wants his bloodline stay on the throne and that's the really crucial thing so mother Saunders his elder daughter will inherit and obviously then the identity of the husband becomes very important and so is there any objection when he does he name or say when I die she will be mine and he names her as his as his heir in some of the charters Yes And this is before she's married and is there any evidence of people than education for the job there's no evidence for that but I would argue given what else we know about women's role in politics that it's entirely conceivable that actually not just she but all of her sisters would have been. Educated women needed to know how politics worked Queens for example had their own households their own estates and revenue that they were expected to manage in support of their husband and sometimes women would find themselves in sort of political caretaker roles if their husbands were royal military campaign or if they had minor sons do you know anything straightforward about her does drama mean what would she look like. Well in the time never describes her does he I think you just say she's very thin and the bald in the 3rd looks like her Yeah that's yeah we know that Baldwin the 3rd was blown yaf and he said that you know he was good looking as well and said that he looked like his mother in that respect but that she was rather spare not perfect but the problem was I mean she was a printer that she could she was designated blue green but the queen wondered things of the green maybe the most important thing is that you could not lead an army into battle and they needed the mantle that you know who done time and then went looking for $100.00 local one of them find. The time Baldwin was thinking about a suitable husband for Melissa and it was around 112627 he lost his own wife morphia we think around that time he was also arranging marriages for another of his daughters Alice of Antioch at that time she gets married to the new heir Boehm on the 2nd but they wanted someone from the West because this would bring over potential new recruits for a new crusade resources wealth money and having had a chat with the nobles of Jerusalem they settled on for a 5th of all g. And why full well he'd already been out to the Holy Land in the 1st place he came out in 1120 he had kept knights there for 100 nights there in the service on crusade for a year so they knew he was rich and he'd made quite a lot of good friends over there and I think that the. But as he thought Yes this would be a great candidate he was a very experienced ruler he'd been ruling on since 1109. Of them which is what good he had children already had Jeffrey of and she who then obviously later went on to become the father of just why did he just desert her and get her Jerusalem. I believe she died in 1126 conveniently. He was available they heard that he was available his wife bagus oddly had passed away so yes he was he was kind of an ideal candidate a bit older than. Possibly about 20 years older when William of Tire writes about him he says oh it was practically ancient but the suggestion is that William was maybe had met him in later life and was you know actually probably when he was about 60 which is why he was saying sell so it's probably his forty's when he gets married so they pull over to be the husband of members on and he thinks as I understand it you know you're going to be right here that he's going to be king of Jerusalem I'm not certain she's going to be his wife who doesn't do much but she didn't think it would be like not a tool so what happened. But they seem to have very different expectations about what this marriage means for by 5th so many sons has been introduced as Catherine said in the charters is the heir us to the kingdom so she has every expectation that she is going to continue to fulfill that role within government that she'll be at the site of her husband and carry on as she has being at the side of her father she will be the queen to folks King folk seems to have been given the impression that he is coming over to Jerusalem he has to marry the woman to get the throne and then he is going to be king in his own right so he is expecting to be king solver all or without having to pay much attention to his wife more or less as he had been counted and without having to pay too much deference to his wife that he is expecting. To be the sole ruler and we can see this in some of the Chronicles from and say these are written from 1137 onwards that adage today in the 12th century and they tell us quite simply that folk married the daughter if the king and became king and that's pretty much the last time Ellison gets there looking in that Chronicle order at the time as he is rising a little bit later in France in the $1130.00 s. He tells us more or less the same story the Count's married the king's daughter and became king would we know about medicines reaction to this culture and we don't know anything at all about her own personal reaction to it all we know is that she effectively gets excluded from government and full with this understanding that he's king he takes the business of the realm and his own hands only his name appears on the chart as to start with so he just assumes it's going to be a conventional arrangement but even though we don't know her reaction I think we can assume that she clearly has other ideas about it and this is not this is not what she had been led to expect she'd been led to expect that it would be more like a co rulership essentially renumbered Robson's been in a prison yes we don't know how many years is there nothing in the darkness for 5 years 1136 when she really starts to come back into her own in the charter's as the queen and that's where we suddenly see that she's there where she hasn't been before previously it's been full who his father and or Baldwin the 2nd made king and that's the any allusion to the fact that he's their 3 marriage whereas once you get into 1136 you see them together so it is I felt the king of Jerusalem together with my wife Melyssa on the Queen of Jerusalem and the way that it's phrased the verbs will become floral whereas before $1136.00 it was our fault too that it becomes we assign we give we grants we can seat and that goes all the way through the chance that with that construction that was obviously a big change what happened. That's quite a lot of reaction to folks assumption of power especially on the death of malice on Father Baldwin the 2nd 1131 by that stage they have a young son already so they've they've provided an heir for the kingdom in the form of the young Baldwin the 3rd but he seems to be as Danielle said you know ruling in his own right not really paints attention to the established an ability putting in his new and given cronies and this causes a lot of upset and it actually results. From France to run the place essentially Yeah what we have is a state of rebellion he's he's also acting as regent for Antioch at this stage and kind of running backwards and forwards trying to keep the nobles happy there and the nobles in Jerusalem but they're not impressed with his exclusion of malice on from power and they rally round but there seems to be a key incidents or suspension of 2 or 3 incidents which which made the change just what I read can you tell us or Florida do know what those what. Matters really come to a head with the involvement of a chap called Hugh countered Jaffer Now Hugh is someone who comes across from the West to take up his inheritance but his father has been have been counted Jaffer He's also a cousin of malice on a very close to her this allows people to start fanning flames of jealousy according to William of Tire in saying or there's something a bit more going on here too close too close it didn't help perhaps that he was also very handsome. Reputation for us. And he was the same age as Melissa and roughly so perhaps they were close and there and of to go around them to do things not I don't think so not really isn't there anyone go yeah they worked on some together he was one of her party's aunts and he was actually married himself he had a good marriage but the marriage put out a couple of the established nobles. I'm base and maybe that led to accusations of treason well but what really spurred it it seems to me was what going on you've been very clear about that is that someone who could have been the agent of full stop him wounded him very very badly Yes And not and not switch the sympathy back to Melissa alone and away from he was being the dastardly chump trying to take away and to menace on being the heroic Queen much better this month from going all the other thing is gathered around that he was and your money is being used crown is in and the bomb accredited like it and so on so that was the change yeah it's the real swing of popular opinion full comics a terrible 5 par basically in his campaign against He he does try to get one of his men to fight you mean a jewel that doesn't work he runs away to Jeff and allies with Ask along he allies with the Muslim anime and that also really lowers his is steaming in people's eyes and his vassals turn him over to the king he was exiled but while he's waiting in Jerusalem dicing for his ship Yes someone tries to stop him and it seems almost unbelievable but it wasn't full keyboard at this hit but it's not successful the queen is fear eous and people say the king isn't safe around malice on the new Also from then on malice or in the records if you really know in your documentary she reasserts or saw she's there all the time it's we all the time so what she's doing all the time now or from that point when he retired tells us that malice on his wrath is as Natasha has that is so dramatic that it's not safe even for the king to be in her presence say when he retires as they come to a reconciliation I mean you're going to whether or not but he says that even the king feared for his safety as states his supporters So that's just the man is wanted and she's You have our own private guard or did you have a particularly bad temper with probably don't know this is quite a lot more about. So what was going on the well is seems the way that when you retire describes it that it is essentially a performance of display of how righteous anger and by putting it in that way it's not this is not the anger of somebody who's had an affair and quarter being caught out this is the anger of somebody who has had something terrible done to them and has every right to be this angry about it so by making her presence felt in that way it becomes very clear to felt over time that he's only going to be able to be the king in any meaningful sense if he was cooperatively with his wife and William of cya has the line he becomes so obscure yes that he doesn't even dare to do anything trivial without the Queen's consent and that's where we really start to say after 1136 that they are working together in every single charter and apart from Antioch which is a different case because that he's a regent not the ruler you don't see them apart you see them joined at the hip in all of these chances can you give us one do instances were they are doing this together or that together building a Council passing along whatever it is yeah so they built their caseloads. Together so about 12 kilometers outside of masculine they also are closely involved together in the building of the convent of Bethany So this eventually goes on to be where malice on the youngest sister better is set up as I passed but in its earliest incarnation this is the 2 of them working together to extend an existing sites of interest for pilgrims they have 2 churches constructed there one for pilgrims one for the community of nuns and when he was tired tells us that medicine has this fortified with a tower because this couple of platy realized that that's something that needs to be done for the safety of the community nothing builders can reduce develop this presence of malice on. Because we don't know what you know about all those who are Armenian hoppers who are help in the way she's queen. I think it could have done I think that sense that my feeling that she's probably going to prepared for the role in combination with her background would certainly be helpful and I think one of the things to say his so we've heard that full casting off to Antioch quite a lot and the fact that medicine and other queens can exercise a warrior skills and I can't lead armies has sometimes been held to hinder their exercisable Thora but we could say that actually it functions in quite the reverse way because full can go away to Antioch and deal with the problems they're safe in the knowledge that the day to day running of Jerusalem so politics and lore and the economy and so on is under Mehlis sondes rule and she can ensure continuity and security so we could say that actually that kind of traditional caretaker role that women often have allows her to be more politically active precisely because her husband and then later her son are the ones that are going often involving themselves in military activities. She was allowed to run. And that's what we we don't know specifically but I think we assume So just because of the way that she appears in the charters I think there's no reason to think that she wasn't the one governing in his absence and we certainly know from other comparable examples in Western Europe that that definitely is the case that women are are bringing these systems in the absence of husbands or sons. Lydon hunting incident and the full level of order it doesn't reemerge it is who should be in horrible acts and that's one of the descriptions you how did you hold on to power after that yes full full he is killed very suddenly out hunting a hare or rabbit or something with Alliance apparently which seems a bit overkill but he falls off he falls on the horse falls on him and there's this terrible accident he dies Melicent medicine is absolutely distraught and it leaves bald in the thirty's 13 at this time. That's right their son and their eldest son and William is tired when he tells us to think so he says that royal power pass to malice owned by had a tree right he says that bald in the thirty's crowned along with malice on. But he also says that Melissa on this ruling because Baldwin is not yet of mine so yes exactly so one way of looking at this is to say that she's functioning as a kind of Regent However when bold and 3rd gets the age of 15 she doesn't step down and some modern historians have been quite negative about her at this point and have said that her actions in the later 11 forty's and early 1150 s are essentially her holding Baldwin back from power that was rightfully his and they talk about her being ambitious and scheming and that she should have stepped down a little bit by her holding on to him and there's a there's a there's a very I'm the tentacles Yes there's one description of her extending her tentacles to try and hinder Baldwins power which is sort of amusing but it also gives the sense of a kind of monstrous unnatural. But the other way of looking at is to say that actually she's not his regent she's a co-ruler with him and there's actually no evidence that people were clamoring for Baldwin to be given the throne William attire albeit that we have the handling carefully does tell us that Bolden the 3rd was rather a badly behaved young man quite permissive us he liked gaming and women and so on and it may be that they genuinely was a feeling that Baldwin wasn't quite ready to take power medicine has a lot of support among the barons and among churchmen and so on and so this idea that she should have stepped down I think we need to be careful of perhaps importing back with some more modern b.s. About where we think women belong in politics. You never know I mean Natasha Johnson but he did assert himself was about 23 how did you do that they ruled together for a while and the situation really begins to unravel I think around 1149 when a lot of the disasters start to happen the other crusade estates and the big point of conflict so it flares up between building a medicine and 1151 to. To go and it it revolves essentially around this kind of group of people who are inflaming the king against his mother and saying you know you're old enough to rule now your group these are rather crude phrase in the Latin verse essentially meaning hanging off his mother's teat you ought to be you know kind of ruling in your own right some of these people when you have time doesn't quite tell us who those people are but we know that medicines constable Manners says of here seems to have ruffled a few feathers especially with the bill in family so there's a question of whether those those might have been the ones who were involved in doing this. But so so most I was relying on this constable to lead the army. And you know Baldwin kind of was thinking this should be my role so what had been doing so he 1st of all challenges his mom and he says you know look I want to be crowned in my own right and I want I want such set the date for Easter and and I and I want to on my own the patriarch actually kind of refuses and then tries to talk him out of it he then says he sort of tries to change the date and then basically just appears in Jerusalem wearing the laurel as if he has been crowned in his own right when he hasn't so it's a bit of a trick and a bit of a bit of a sort of show. But it was a great dinner we haven't got to the point then all the sudden he seems to gather some sort of force together you turn now to give and take half of kingdom which I often wonder to do the Well 1st of all he calls the high court he gets the nobles in and he says right I'm going to divide the kingdom she gets Jerusalem and Nablus and he gets Tire and a care I think but then once the once that's sorted he sets out he sets up his own constable and then he invades medicines half. So he turns up for terrorism with armed force he he besiege is medicines constable Amanda says yeah basically turns. And and and the people of Jerusalem don't feel they can keep him out of the city so they let him in and he bombard His mother insists Del for a few days. Jenkins and yet and all the rest yes and business yes but peace is finally negotiated possibly through the auspices of the church after that stage medicine to Greece to step down she cedes Jerusalem to Baldwin and she then goes into retirement at Nablus Yes and Custer loads of money about what home was your. Let's go to take a bit of an overview how did she change your Islam or changed when she was queen she just quite a lot to improve the landscape of the city both spiritually and also strategically so with something like the holy sefl car that becomes a massive project in 1131 and at the start of it is really marked by her own fault choosing that as the location of that coronation previously of the kings of Jerusalem had been crowned king in the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem So this is a March departure from what's gone before and it seems that they felt but for let's head to call purposes the holy sepak as it stood in advise on time restoration was too small for their purposes so what Mehlis on the sides today is essentially to make it quite a Western style Romanesque building bringing in the holy places of the tomb of Christ Calvary all into one structure but it actually ends up being that mix of east and west and smiles that we would expect from what we know of malice on to this point so the buys on time style over tender is kept so with a maze a so with a dime so it ends up being this high bridge construction and that's a long term project so it is dedicated on the 15th of July 1149 to mark the 50th anniversary of the capture of Jerusalem. Details like the bell tower that would still have been an ongoing process much later so that's had a big prestige project there's also the castles being built around Beth Gable n. Blanche guards. All essentially around a frontier with Ask a lawn so against you know issues involved in the we know she's involved in those from the chart it's when he retired gives us this very gendered portrayal that Mehlis arms does the church and folk does the castles but when you look at the charters both of them are equally involved in back governors she died in 61 did she go quietly to numbers I mean she. Came and went in Jerusalem he was acclaimed she left did you leave or he bombarded of course in the you know or did she go quiet litigious threaten to come up with them to well I don't I think we again we don't really know anything about how she felt and I suppose one thing to say about it is it's interesting it's one of those situations where from the same evidence historians of drones are quite different conclusions so some have said she basically completely capitulate and she has no power and that the only reason Baldwin puts her in his charters afterwards is so that she doesn't feel humiliated whereas others have said that actually the fact that she appears in the charters is an indication that he is still consulting her and that he's still taking her advice and William a tie gives a number of examples afterwards of situations where she does still seem to be involved so often takes ask along isn't it he takes her advice about what to do with the beauty and sort of distributing land some people have even argued that she's actually even more active after she so-called retires than than she is beforehand so it's one of those situations that is a matter of interpretation to some extent with your view. It's it's difficult to say I think that the certainly the way that William of tire frames it is that it's a way of actually showing that Baldwin is prudent because William of Tai emphasizes over and over again the accomplishment of Ellison's rule and especially her wisdom and the fact that she. Ancestors in the accomplishment of her rule and so I think the fact that Baldwin is is getting her consent to his act is a way of actually demonstrating that his rule is good because it's a property of ideal kingship to take advice and there's no one better to take advice from than malice and. Natasha nationals and some of them overrun Jerusalem in 110 to 7 was the kingdom already in decline. I mean that's question of debated by historians as well obviously Melissa and also her reign of coincides with the 2nd crusade which was a major event and you know we have kings from the West present in the East she she brings so we have to live with the 7th of France we have Conrad of Germany they meet together at the Council of Parma and they make a decision to attack Damascus which goes disastrously wrong unfortunately fortunately we are in demand in these yes and the legacy of that is that help from the West that the argument has been that help from the West isn't so forthcoming that crusade is a not so interested this big crusade with kings and it was a failure and this means that those in the Latin East have to look elsewhere for support by Xanthian. Some people have poked holes in the argument to say actually there is still quite a lot of crusading activity just because kings didn't go. It doesn't mean that there wasn't crusading activity certainly Terry Flanders Philippa Flanders put together some very big expeditions but was the kingdom in decline they are facing a stronger enemy they are facing a more united enemy undernourished didn't this really solid income and. So Saladin is essentially sets himself up as the successor it's in their den but this kind of later period all about the race for Egypt and controlling the power and money that comes out of Egypt in order to shore up the holy city and there is quite a lot of offensive actions by some of the settler Kings most on Sun Amalric 5 times tries to capture Egypt before you know it instead of all Sharkey manages to do it but he's not successful and that stage we have then a period of decline as Syria and Egypt. United in trying to push the Latin Christians out of the idea and so then goes back to the introducers of lines and missile lines as well and you have the question is wrong this program at the moment and then you know what does Melissa's Melissa what does mother's always live tell us about Queen ship you know time well it tells us that it's something of a balancing act so I mentioned earlier with the discussion of the source is that a clever tells her that she should act essentially as a man but the lesson of Matilda in England is that you can take that too far along the spectrum and then the source is well go against you for being deprived of any femininity at all and being far too masculine So there's something of a balancing act there I think what she does that's quite successful is have patronage is not just directed at Frankish Christians but also Armenian so her support of something like the rebuilding of the Cathedral of St James which is an Armenian church gives that sense that this is a woman who has an eye on the new Frankish settlers and also the indigenous Christian population. What she does with the covered market in Jerusalem is to think about the pilgrims there are people who don't have a fixed abode while they're on a pilgrimage in Jerusalem and covering the market which includes 2 side streets and the street of bad cooking gives these programs with a place of security a bit of stability somewhere where they can eat and the fact that that has a vaulted ceiling with slants and it means that the smells are going to have somewhere to escape so it's not going to be quite as unwelcoming up places the street of cooking might suggest it might be but it also gives people shelter from the writing so she has that balance between being somebody who can be very masculine when she has to be but also someone Sharon is taking care of the general population Well thank God her much thank you Daniel Parker Catherine loose and Natasha I want you next week there's the king of Chinese naturalists leave sure your own who came to heal the sick in the time of the Ming Dynasty in the 16th century thank you very much for listening in our time with Melvyn Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson and if you download this program or listen on b.b.c. Sounds later you can hear what Melvin and his guests went on to discuss in the studio afterwards. My cast away this week is the actor Stephen Grey and to him getting into character begins not with the script but with the book but most arrive on a modern Christian rock just wait a minute of what brought What about is what you think it is and she and she's like that's a good one yeah but I think we better get mean should we do in sort. Of entertainment you go watch Michael what you think it was. And she what she's like and we have that that's much better and like Thomas Steven Green my castaway I do hope you'll join us to hear his Desert Island Discs tomorrow morning at 9. Now on Radio 4 longwave in d.a.p. Digital radio it's time for the daily service which comes from Gilford Baptist Church and is led by the Reverend in Stackhouse. You're listening to Radio 4 f.m. This month sees the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Eliot and to mark the occasion all this week Catherine Hughes presents 5 short programs exploring her life through 5 of her most unforgettable characters with Judith Stephenson As Elliott is Episode 4 of George Eliot a life in 5 characters Silas Marner lives a solitary life in the Midlands village of rather low shunned by the small religious community to which she previously belonged he has nothing to console him but the growing pile of gold which he earns by Lane and weaving. Then one night his glittering fortune is stolen and he's left totally bereft. See that follows is amongst the most beautiful and unexpected in all Georgia and it's writing turning towards the hearth where the 2 logs had fallen apart and sent forth only a red uncertain glimmer he seated himself on his fireside chair and was stooping to push his logs together went to his blurred vision it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in front of the half gold his own gold brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away he felt his heart begin to beat violently and for a few moments he was unable to stretch out his hand and grasp the restored treasure the heap of gold seemed to glow and get larger but need his agitated gaze he lent forward at last and stretched forth his hand but instead of the hard core in with the familiar resisting outline his fingers encountered soft warm curls in utter amazement Silas fell on his knees and bent his head low to examine the Marvel it was a sleeping child a round fatha thing with soft yellow rings. All over its head. I'm exploring characters this week and all of the women apart for Silas that is in the studio with me is at its most recent Fred Davis is going to be drawing out the strengths between her own life and her characters but I start as ever with the view of a contemporary novelist the polish and short story writer David Constantine has long been a great lover of the novel and this particularly moved by Silas says many physical frailties his emotional self limitations would stay quit his disability some kind of catalepsy all of which a painfully apparent Miss Silas describes to his kindly neighbor Dolly Winthrop the appearance of the little girl. On his doorstep is alone 3 shows or it starts when it is alone thing and I'm alone in the thing my money's gone I don't know where and this is come from I don't know where I know nothing I'm partly maze a maze this is that word many are not my head slightly but for the stories it is a good state to be in this kind of confusion it's a benign one really because something now is going on in him which he will find his way toward sometimes nearly blind it's like a mole finding the way towards these things not beautifully gone all the time he was only concerned with work and money he was in the dark and this is a man who finding its way from being away by a gift which would be perfectly are cowards or would say that's not for me but the something in stink really brave about him which I suppose it's like the soul realizing its own way to redemption you can't do on your own that again any. Then it's got to come from outside but being able to act Sept and understand that this is the good coming in is extraordinary and powerful powerful writing and the cataleptic fit which are a medical condition these absences as they're called it sounds awful and it is awful insane but actually these are moments of possibility of there being in our space a small space in into which something can come ellipse the door open in a kind of magical wish that the gold would somehow be recklessly returned and of course then what happens is that instead of the dead thing being found in return in Morse this adorable child and falls asleep on the hall and he has short sighted Anyway he's used to period very closely and he peers but he also talked with he stroked her hair and it's at that moment that something is happening in him Dolly agrees to help Silas and advise him on how to bring up every worried straight away that the woman Dolly you know would take over but also that anxious that Eppie shouldn't transfer her affections immediately as it were the more likely object a motherly woman and very fortunate for me he says I can learn I can learn and there's some the missing is ignorance but knowing what he warns and being anxious to take advice and to be taught and that's precisely what what he taught us in this is all along he wants it stopped he's finding things out about himself which are clearly a good thing him in makes him a better human being is it is that really a more alive person and more with things to give because it is as I say is this is reciprocated this is clearly mainly him but he gets to Eppie she gives to him and the pair of them. Give to the surrounding people and so he takes in the child and brings her up as is own Donna helps in practical ways although her parents are fine she doesn't always pay off one point she suggests Silas a sort of Victorian version of the no she stepped the idea that she might run away again and come to harm gave him unusual resolution and for the 1st time he determined to try the coal hole a small closet near the hearth Norty Norty epee he suddenly began holding her on his knee and pointing to her muddy feet and clothes naughty to cope with this citizen run away Eppie must go into the coal hole for being naughty daddy was put there in the coal hole he half expected that this would be shock enough and that Eppie would begin to cry but instead of that she began to shake her self on his knee as if the proposition opened a pleasing novelty seeing that he must proceed to extremities he put her into the coal hole and held the door closed with a trembling sense that he was using a strong measure for a moment there was silence but then came a little cry. P. B. And Silas let her out again saying now appeal never be naughty again else she must go in the coal hole a black cannot replace the weaving must stand still a long while this morning for now Eppie must be washed and have clean clothes on but it was to be hoped that this punishment would have a lasting effect and save time in future though perhaps it would have been better if Eppie had cried more in half an hour she was clean. He turned round again and was going to place in her little chair near the loom when she peeped out at him with black face and hands again and said. That tell you how this total failure of a coal hole discipline shook Silas's belief in the efficacy of punishment assigns his love for epi grows so does his terror of losing her when this fear looks like becoming a reality the humble Weaver son's up new reserves of courage even though the man who now claims the child is his own is far higher up the social ladder What's more this rival father has a real biological claim to the girl who by now has grown into a teenager with a mind of her own there's the moment when he knows that this is his chance and he speaks up then and he says no no I can't part with it I can't let it go it's come to me I have a right to keep it and that's taken up again right at the end you see the whole passage into a greater humanity says since the time the child was sent to me and I've come to love her as myself I've had light enough to trust in by and now she says she'll never leave me I think I should trust until I die. You can't beat her. As the child's mind was growing into knowledge his mind was growing into memory as her life unfolded his soul long stupefied in a cold narrow prison was unfolding too and trembling gradually into full consciousness. Now Philip Silas Marner is devoted to his stepdaughter she's clearly turned his life around completely but it sure didn't feel quite so dearly about her own 3 step sons by Linnaeus did she have government it's always struck me that she cleverly arrange things so that she didn't have to see her stepchildren that often by that time she'd become the writer I don't think it was easy for her to set up a 2nd family the word the pressures to do that writing as hard as possible and to earn money but she did want to be some sort of 2nd mother to those boys it had been difficult from the start for her to have a simple natural family though he clearly emotionally wanted it but the mother was somehow absent in her childhood probably some form of depression so she was brought up mainly by the man so it was the father who was a big parental figure for her and it was the brother Isaac who was the great love of her the life and the some it's you rights or in memory of that almost a deal ik childhood with the brother so she knew what innocence and delight children could offer the beginning of a life and it's as much about the effect of the child on Silas as it is about the child itself so in these quotations to begin with these excerpts it refers to the child is eat what turns a child from an 8 to a she is one thing and that's his love for her so that's where George Eliot has got to. That's the bit that George Eliot has found and she always wanted to find the good deep thing another way in which she's very like Silas I think is that sad as an adult woman what she goes to live with Henry Louis she's also isn't she I mean we know of course that her family including her brother Isaac would have no more contact with broke off all contact because she's living with a married man but also once they moved to London this still all fall out of limitations on what she could do where she can go she's very very aware of nasty gossip and so forth so she knows exactly what it feels like to be silenced at the beginning somebody who's always slightly apart from the community I agree all the time that those tense insecurities about getting independent and yet losing the past no wonder when you become independent enough to be a writer you turn back to the past that you've been independent from and imaginatively we enter with memories and then there's Silas Marner says physical disability he has fits all absences which means he appears strange or uncanny to his neighbors now as far as we know children didn't suffer from fits pretty she enjoyed really really poor physical or mental health didn't she when she was writing her books of course in relation to illness they were nothing like the pains and pangs of Silas Marner these were partly psychological to the Taleban Moana I mean this illness was partly psychological It was always to think it must have driven George only with mad and one of the great things was that he supported it through his O'Neill health they were the most unhealthy couple in a way though they managed better and it's in the back garden that you wouldn't imagine those are so real what she was terrified of I think was losing those emotional bearings that she feared she'd lost when her father died that Silas my. Lost by going Dad So what she's interested in is really the Cooper ration not just of health but of all your emotional being and that's what this child does for Silas Marner that's what makes it so beautiful well thank you very much for that in the next program we'll be hearing about in its final heroin which it harlots from Daniel Ronda so glamorous and beautiful but with so few choices as such little agency has said it was in its own life as a woman and that constricted feet Torin wild Katherine he's with George Eliot and life in 5 characters the readings were by Juliet Stevenson and the producer was Beatty Ruben's sounds music radio pod casts don't tell me the score is the podcast that uses sport to explore life's bigger questions I didn't think Cardinal addiction problem join made so I'm in Monday as I discuss things including confidence mortality and mental health with a world class athletes just sometimes make decisions which on easy including the England batsman Alastair Kirk this new collection Ronnie O'Sullivan and the Olympic gold medalist Caitlin John Bryson as you come off the term of the last 100 metres to go remember what that looks like this is going to be a war and just a sack of Don't tell me the school download the free b.b.c. Sounds out so listen. B.b.c. News at 10 o'clock Labor will launch its general election manifesto this morning promising a radical agenda which will transform lives if they form the next government the party has insisted its plans to build 100000 council houses a year by 2024 is deliverable within the timescale. A lawyer representing victims of the convicted sex offender Geoffrey Epstein has called on Prince Andrew to help the u.s. Authorities investigating allegations against the financier Labor's Angela Rayner has said the Duke should do everything he can to help the victims get justice the chancellor suggested said whether or not Prince Andrew volunteered to give evidence was a matter for him none of us can decide that for him but I think that the steps that he has taken sensible and hopefully it will help to end some of the suffering of some of the victims of Mr Epstein And that's the most important thing the victims of Mr Epstein. Shares in Royal Mail have fallen value after it admitted that its plans to reorganize the service were behind share Jule is one that is u.k. Business could make a loss in the next financial year and that industrial action would only hurt the company. Firefighters in Australia battling almost 200 bushfires across the country in the state of Victoria the highest fire alert level has been issued for the 1st time in nearly a decade British Airways says some of its flights were disrupted because of a technicality this morning however it says services in and out of Gatwick and Heathrow are now running normally. The poet laureate Simon Armitage has announced a new award to celebrate poetry about nature and the environment he'll datas salary of $5000.00 pounds towards funding because we spoke to the psychiatric student she said look there's no guarantee with death but I predict based on my professional opinion that within 6 months your daughter will be home and she will be in the community and I know that face and I my husband took our daughter there it come back and he cried and it was almost if this is possible today. It's almost like a cheat. And we thought what can we do to keep our family together what we can do with throw ourselves at Horton 10 percent behind supporting our daughter and staff where can to get that for obvious you had no idea if what was to come if you ever look back on that 1st day of her being in hospital you know how the comment towards the end of this process of our daughter been released I think about it said March to the extent it keeps me awake at night and this is Congress a lot parents in this position they say to them sass. After I'd done something wrong could I have done something to frankly and people couldn't be wracked with guilt so not only has it been 14 years your daughter's been through 6 hospitals or treatment centers.