> Before they killed everyone, the relationship was great
Yeah, probably I didn’t express it that well. I mean the ruling class was quite Latinized and had decent relations with the Crusader Kingdoms and often intermarried.
This was not at all popular amongst the masses (and more so the economy and trade being dominated by Italians and high taxes used to fund to fund all the mostly failed military campaigns). Andronikos utilized that in addition to general hatred towards the aristocracy during his coup which lead to the massacres and a permanent political shift. The Empire also lost most of the economic and political control it had over the Crusader States as after that (the Kingdom of Jerusalem was in practice a vasal state of the empire at the time and was reliant on Byzantine funding).
Yeah, probably I didn’t express it that well. I mean the ruling class was quite Latinized and had decent relations with the Crusader Kingdoms and often intermarried.
This was not at all popular amongst the masses (and more so the economy and trade being dominated by Italians and high taxes used to fund to fund all the mostly failed military campaigns). Andronikos utilized that in addition to general hatred towards the aristocracy during his coup which lead to the massacres and a permanent political shift. The Empire also lost most of the economic and political control it had over the Crusader States as after that (the Kingdom of Jerusalem was in practice a vasal state of the empire at the time and was reliant on Byzantine funding).