Henry II of Champagne (29 July 1166-10 September 1197) was the Count of Champagne from 1181 to 1197 (succeeding Henry I and preceding Theobald III) and the jure uxoris King of Jerusalem from 1192 to 1197 as the husband of Isabella I of Jerusalem.
Biography[]
Henry was the elder son of Count Henry I of Champagne, and the maternal grandson of King Louis VII of France and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. His betrothed Isabella of Hainault later married King Philip Augustus, causing friction at the French court. In 1190, Henry decided to embark on the Third Crusade, arriving ahead of his uncles Philip and Richard the Lionheart and leading the French contingent at the Siege of Acre before Philip's arrival. He helped in the abduction of Queen Isabella I of Jerusalem to force her to divorce Humphrey IV of Toron, and he was wounded in battle on 15 November 1190. By 1192, he had shifted his allegiance to Richard, helping to name Conrad of Montferrat as King of Jerusalem. After Conrad was murdered, he went on to marry Queen Isabella, becoming the jure uxoris King of Jerusalem. They were said to have had a romantic marriage, and Henry forged an alliance with the Hashshashin order, raising suspicions as to whether he and Richard had ordered Conrad's murder. In 1197, while greeting a party of Pisan envoys, he accidentally stepped out of a window and fell, and he was crushed to death by a servant who had tried to grab him, but had fallen on top of him.