“I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, And from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting.” _King Lear._
Fulke, Count of Anjou, born about the year 1092, was thirty-nine years of age at the time when his father-in-law died, and he became, with his wife Milicent, the successor to the throne. He was a man of affable and generous disposition, patient and prudent rather than impetuous, and of great experience and judgment in military operations. He was of small stature—all the previous kings had been tall men—and had red hair; “in spite of which,” says William of Tyre, who regarded red-haired men with suspicion, “the Lord found him, like David, after his own heart.” The principal defect in him was that he had no memory. He forgot faces, persons, and promises. He would entertain a man one day in the most friendly spirit possible, making all kinds of offers of assistance, and giving him to understand that he was entirely devoted to his interests. The next day he would meet him and ask people who he was, having meanwhile quite forgotten all about him. This was sometimes extremely embarrassing, and “many men who reckoned on their familiar relations with the king fell into confusion, reflecting that they themselves, who wanted to show as protectors and patrons to other people, required a patron with the king.”
The domestic relations of Fulke were somewhat complicated, but they bear a certain special interest for English readers.[62] His father, Fulke, the Count of Touraine and Anjou, was married three times, and had one child from each marriage. His third wife, Bertrade, the mother of King Fulke, ran away from him, and became the mistress of King Philip of France, by whom she had three children. One of them was that Cæcilia who married Tancred, and, after his death, Count Pons. Fulke, by means of his mother’s influence, making a wealthy marriage, was the father of that Geoffrey Plantagenet who married Matilda of England, and produced the Plantagenet line. His daughter Matilda was also betrothed to William, the son of Henry I., and, on the drowning of that prince, she went into a convent, where she remained. Another daughter, Sybille, married Thierry, Count of Flanders. By his second wife, Milicent, Fulke had two sons, Baldwin and Amaury, both of whom became, in turn, Kings of Jerusalem.