Ancestry
Baldwin was the son of Hugh I, Count of Rethel, and his wife Melisende, daughter of Guy I of Montlhéry. He had two younger brothers, Gervaise and Manasses, and two sisters Matilda and Hodierna. Baldwin was called a cousin of the brothers Eustace III of Boulogne, Godfrey of Bouillon, and Baldwin of Boulogne, but the exact manner in which they are related has never been discovered. He left his own family behind to follow his cousins on the First Crusade in 1096. Some books (in particular Steven Runciman's History of the Crusades) have claimed a fictitious Ida of Boulogne as grandmother to Baldwin II in order to force the relationship. While Ida of Boulogne did exist, neither of Baldwin's parents were her descendants.
Read more about this topic: Baldwin II Of Jerusalem
Famous quotes containing the word ancestry:
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—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
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—Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901)
“I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)