Dynasty, Identity, Authority: Female Rule and Political Culture in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1131–1228
Ana C. Núñez is an 8th year Ph.D. Candidate in Medieval European History, focusing on medieval women, the Crusades, and rulership in the High Middle Ages. Her dissertation, "Dynasty, Identity, Authority: Female Rule and Political Culture in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1131–1228," traces the reigns of five queens, examining the parameters of their authority and their activities as political women. Ana holds an M.Phil from the University of Cambridge. Her work at Stanford has been supported by the Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence (DARE) and Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) Fellowships. In AY2025–26, Ana serves as a Dissertation Fellow at The Clayman Institute for Gender Research and a Digital Public Fellow at Stanford Humanities Center.
Congratulations on your Clayman Institute fellowship! Tell us about your research project.
Thanks so much! The Kingdom of Jerusalem was founded by European crusaders after they conquered Jerusalem, the most holy city in Christendom, in 1099. It was one of four "crusader states," that is, European-style polities (broadly speaking) founded in the region of Syria-Palestine in the wake of the First Crusade. It was a dynastic monarchy, in which inheritance operated according to the principle of "plus dreit heir aparant" —"the nearest heir apparent." Five times between 1131 and 1228, the nearest heir apparent was a woman: Melisende (r.1131–1162), Sybil (r.1186–1190), Isabella I (r.1190–1205/6), Maria (r.1205/6–1212), and Isabella II (r.1212–1228).
In my dissertation, I focus on these five royal women. I conceptualize a new term, "hereditary queen," to distinguish them from consort queens (who ruled by right of their marriage to a king), regent queens (who ruled as the mother of a minor king), and regnant queens (who inherited the throne and ruled independently). With the exception of Melisende, the extant evidence provides very little evidence of these hereditary queens ruling independently. Yet, this doesn't mean that their rule was therefore insignificant or unimportant within the Kingdom of Jerusalem's political culture. In fact, I discuss in my dissertation that the Kingdom of Jerusalem developed a specific type of queenship in which the hereditary queen and the consort king formed a ruling partnership, with the hereditary queen meaningfully functioning as the dynastic guarantor. Looking carefully at the activities of these five royal women, I examine how both queenship and kingship in the 12th- and 13th-century Kingdom of Jerusalem were relational, diverse, and complex offices.
One interesting conclusion I reach in my dissertation is that this particular form of rulership persisted even after Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, conquered the city of Jerusalem and almost the entirety of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187. In the face of such huge territorial loss and institutional transition, including the re-establishment of its capital in the northern city of Acre, one might expect the Kingdom’s leading barons to have preferred the rule of a sole king. But that's not what happened. Instead, three more royal women—Isabella I, Maria, and Isabella II—successfully and seamlessly inherited the throne of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the political partnership between the hereditary queen and the consort king continued until Isabella II's death in 1228.
You published some of your findings about the reign of Isabella II in the Journal of Medieval History. Tell us more of the article.
The article presents a careful analysis of one of the hereditary queens, Isabella II, about whom we have the least amount of historical evidence. It was actually the paucity of extant evidence that motivated me to write about her, because I was sure that something could still be said beyond the fact that she inherited the throne, married, and then died, which was typically the framework applied to Isabella II in the current literature.
Isabella II is the last of the five hereditary queens of Jerusalem. In 1225, she married Frederick II, the Holy Roman emperor and the king of Sicily, and actually left the Kingdom of Jerusalem to join her husband in southern Italy. As I said, very little evidence survives for Isabella II, but as my advisor Professor Fiona Griffiths has shown in the case of medieval priests' wives, a lot can still be said from just one piece of extant evidence, and the experience of even lesser-documented women deserves to be studied.
With these methodological contentions, I examine documentary, chronicle, liturgical, and architectural evidence to discuss how Isabella II traveled alongside Frederick II as part of his itinerant court and, on certain occasions, took meaningful political actions alongside her husband. The reign of Isabella II is significant because she was the Kingdom’s last hereditary queen and the only hereditary female ruler to physically leave the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In marrying Frederick II, Isabella II facilitated the integration of Frederick's court with that of the Kingdom of Jerusalem—a political reality that would continue to characterize the kingdom until Frederick's death in 1250.
Did the hereditary queens’ political power trickle down to other women in the Kingdom?
I don't know if we can talk about political power trickling down in this context, but a few things come to mind. First, the inheritance principle of "plus dreit heir aparant" that I referenced earlier applied from the monarchy to the sergeantry (owing non-military service to a lord), so across a large portion of society women, if they were the nearest heir, could inherit land and titles in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Some of the biggest lordships in the kingdom were inherited by women. For example, Juliana Grenier inherited the lordship of Caesarea in ca.1190. Second, while the upper echelon of society was exclusively Christian, they were not necessarily from the same denomination of Christianity or region of Christendom. The European crusaders who conquered Jerusalem and established the "crusader states" are collectively referred to by historians as "Latins" or "Franks" and belonged to what we now call Catholicism. Their Christian neighbors in the eastern Mediterranean, however, were Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Syriac, to name a few. There was a fair amount of intermarriage between the Latins and the Greek Orthodox and the Armenian Orthodox. For example, King Baldwin II married an Armenian woman, Morphia. Their daughter, Melisende, was the first of the five hereditary queens. Both of Melisende's sons, Baldwin III and Amaury, married Byzantine (i.e. Greek Orthodox) women. The art and architecture from the Kingdom of Jerusalem really reflects this multiculturalism. For example, Melisende was the recipient (and patron, as I argue in my dissertation) of a beautifully ornate psalter that, while written in Latin, features heavily Byzantine-style images.
What was it like writing an article versus a dissertation chapter?
I would say that writing an article is different from writing a dissertation chapter insofar as it has to stand entirely on its own as a full, complete argument, whereas a dissertation chapter—while certainly presenting its own coherent argument—is part of the unfolding of a larger, overarching thesis. The space constraints of an article really compel you to condense the argument, zero in on what's actually significant, and write as effectively as possible.
While entirely borne out of my dissertation research, my Journal of Medieval History article is actually not a distinct dissertation chapter. Each chapter of my dissertation focuses on a particular source base or theme, looking comparatively across the reigns of all five of the hereditary queens of Jerusalem. For example, Chapter 1 looks at the process of liturgical queen-making in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, examining the chronicle and liturgical evidence to assess how royal inauguration—e.g., the liturgical rites of anointing and coronation—were essential to transforming the female heir into a queen. By contrast, the article is a deep dive into the reign of just one of the hereditary queens, Isabella II, gathering together all the extant evidence that pertains to her. The article thus pulls from research that spans the entire dissertation, but changes the focus to zero in on only one of these royal women. I wanted to write an article exclusively on Isabella II because as the last of these five royal women, she constitutes a turning point in the Kingdom of Jerusalem's politics, and yet very little had been written about her up until this point.
Overall, it was an incredible learning experience, and publishing an article before completion of the dissertation has helped me make the dissertation stronger.
How did you get interested in Medieval History?
I was drawn to the study of the Middle Ages beginning in college because it felt like stepping into a different worldview. The medieval history I studied in college was very much within the framework of “histoire des mentalités,” and I was hooked on getting to examine, for example, how a medieval female monastic playwright conceived of her world. As for the study of the Crusades and queenship, I arrived here along two roads. The first was a longstanding interest in late-antique and early medieval pilgrimage to Jerusalem. I was intrigued by the sensory-laden language pilgrims used when describing their sojourn through the Holy Land. This led me to study the First Crusade, which was understood by contemporaries as an armed pilgrimage. The second was the influence of my advisor, Professor Fiona Griffiths, who works on medieval monastic women. It was in dialogue with her that I realized I was also really interested in studying medieval women in general, and this led me to examine the hereditary queens of Jerusalem, in particular.
Could you share an unexpected moment during your doctoral research?
One of the best research moments was visiting the burial of the last hereditary queen, Isabella II’s. As the second wife of Frederick II, Holy Roman emperor and king of Sicily, Isabella II was buried in southern Italy rather than in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Her burial (though now a modern, rather than a medieval, tomb) is still in the cathedral of Andria, in the region of Apulia. Her modern tomb resides in the cathedral's crypt, a subterranean church from between the 9th and 11th century. It was incredible to visit this site in person because it felt like a moment of traveling in time from the 21st back to the 13th century.
Tomb of Isabella II (d.1228). Cathedral of Andria, Italy. Author's photo.
Facade, Cathedral of Andria, Italy. Author's photo.
Are you teaching as part of the Clayman Institute Dissertation Fellowship?
I served as a teaching assistant for Introduction to Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies, which was a really great experience. It was an amazing opportunity that took me completely out of my medieval comfort zone and materials. I suddenly had the chance to read foundational 20th-century feminist texts, think about feminism in a global perspective, and think about gender and sexuality in a modern context.
I should add that I absolutely love teaching because it enlivens my research. In Spring Quarter 2022, I offered my own course, History12S: "Multiculturalism in the Middle Ages: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain, which covered major political, economic, and religious history from the region, between the years 711 and 1492. The Middle Ages can be so fun to explore for the first time because the period either seems really different from our modern age, or, surprisingly familiar. Both are great entry points into the time period, and I find teaching medieval history re-ignites my own passion for the material.
You have also been serving as a Digital Public Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center for the past 3 years. Tell us about your work and engagements as part of that role.
As a Digital Public Fellow, I work as an editor for Arcade, the Stanford Humanities Center's open-access humanistic salon. I've worked primarily for the Colloquies feature and more recently for the Interventions feature, as well. Colloquies are digital clusters on exciting topics in the Humanities, each curated by one or two scholars. Interventions is our blog space, where authors can share new ideas, present works-in-progress, or play around with the format.
Currently, I edit the Imperial Environments Colloquy, which brings together new and already-published material to form a conversation at the intersection of place, ecology, power, capital, and governance. This colloquy is particularly exciting, because I work with three curators who are my colleagues in the History program—namely, Julia Fine, Miri Powell, and Mariana Calvo. In this context, most of my work focuses on bringing the curator's vision to life by working with presses to secure permission to republish material on Arcade, working with our graphics editors to create beautiful artwork for each piece, and publishing the material on the Arcade website.
My work as a Digital Public Fellow has been fantastic for both giving me hands-on editorial experience and introducing me to the world of open-access publishing. In February 2026, I had the opportunity to speak on a panel at Stanford's Open Access Publishing in the Humanities Symposium, discussing the ways in which university-based publications (such as the Arcade) and university libraries may shape the open access ecosystem and the future of scholarly publishing. As I contributed to the conversation as a historian and a digital humanities practitioner, I have gained a deep understanding of the landscape of non-commercial publishing, its current challenges, and future possibilities.