But every recorded act of Fulk V. shews that he was too practical in temper to be dazzled by the mere glitter of a crown, without heeding the solid advantages to be gained with it or to be given up for its sake. He must have known that the sacred border-land of Christendom and Islam was a much harder post to defend than the marchland of France and Aquitaine had ever been; he must have known that the consort of the queen of Jerusalem would find little rest upon her throne. But this second Count Fulk the Palmer cared for rest as little as the first. It was work that he longed for: and work at home was at an end for him. The mission of the counts of Anjou, simply as such, was accomplished; when the heir of the Marchland wedded the Lady-elect of Normandy and England, he entered upon an entirely new phase of political existence. Fulk had in fact, by marrying his son to the Empress, cut short his own career, and left himself no choice but to submit to complete effacement or seek a new sphere of action elsewhere. Had Baldwin’s proposal come a year earlier, it might have caused a struggle between inclination and duty; coming as it did just after Henry’s, it extricated all parties from their last difficulty. [619] She died in 1126; Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 33, 190). A story of her last illness, in _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ c. 36 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._, p. 320), is very characteristic of Fulk, and indicates, too, that whether or not his marriage with her began in policy alone, it ended in real affection. [620] Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. 1. _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 36 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._) p. 321. [621] He cannot have been more than thirty-eight; he may have been only thirty-six. [622] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 871). Will. Tyr. as above.