Maria of Montferrat
Overview
Biography
(See also Genealogical Table(s): 7.)
Maria was the daughter of queen Isabelle I of Jerusalem and Conrad of Montferrat. Sometimes called the marquise from her father’s title, though she was born after his death. She assumed the crown in 1205, at age thirteen, after the death of her mother (and last stepfather). She married John of Brienne in 1208. He had been chosen as her husband and co-ruler by the French king Philip Augustus, at the request of envoys from the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem in 1208. She died in 1212, leaving a young daughter, Yolanda/Isabella, who inherited the crown and married the western emperor Frederick II in 1225.