Knight of Jerusalem

Balian, the landless son of a local baron, goes to Jerusalem to seek his fortune. Instead, he
finds himself trapped into serving the young prince suffering from leprosy, an apparent sentence
to obscurity and death. But the unexpected death of King Amalric makes the leper boy King
Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, and Balian’s prospects begin to improve.
The Byzantine princess Maria Comnena is just thirteen years old when she arrives in the
Kingdom of Jerusalem at her great uncle’s orders to cement the alliance between the two
Christian kingdoms in the East. The child wife of a man almost three times her own age, she is
despite her excellent education and intelligence little more than a pretty doll in the eyes of her
husband. When she fails to produce a male heir for the desperate king, her marriage becomes a
gilded prison. Until suddenly the king is dead and Maria finds herself a wealthy widow at just twenty years of age.
Meanwhile, the charismatic Kurdish leader Saladin has united the forces of Islam and vowed
to drive the Christians into the sea. While King Baldwin IV—and Balian—struggle to
save the Holy Land for Christendom by whatever means they can, the internal rivalries of
Templars and Hospitallers, the advocates of offense and defense, and the bitter rivalries of
barons threaten to tear the kingdom apart.