Throughout his rule, infighting in the royal court and intermural conflicts between competing branches of families continued to plague him, as well as external threats from the powerful Ayubbid dynasty under Saladin the Conqueror, who had surrounded the Frankish kingdoms. The disease would not stop him, however, from being thrust onto the throne when he was only 13 years old. Well educated, handsome, and determined, Baldwin had a fatal condition: leprosy. Heir to the politically tumultuous Franco-Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, he grew up without a mother, as his father's marriage to her was annulled, and political intrigues and contending families and parties surrounded him. It is not fitting that a hand so weak as mine should hold power when fear of Arab aggression daily presses upon the Holy City and when my sickness increases the enemy's daring." -From a letter of Baldwin IV to the French Kingīaldwin IV was born in 1161. "To be deprived of the use of one's limbs is of little help to one in carrying out the work of government.
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