As Robert’s brother was a mere boy, the King of Jerusalem, a worthy old man of eighty, was summoned to fill the throne for nine years, and then Baldwin II. entered upon his long and inglorious reign; of which we need only say that, in spite of his extreme liberality in selling, especially to St Louis of France, the valuable relics (the crown of thorns, the rod of Moses, etc.) which had accumulated in Constantinople, and in spite of all the efforts of the Pope to maintain the worthless monarch on his throne, and that throne subservient to the Vatican, the feeble and incompetent rule of the Latins sank lower and lower, until, in 1261, a regiment of Greeks put an end to it. This slight account of the Latin rule at Constantinople will suffice to enable us to follow intelligently the fortunes of the descendants of the Byzantine monarchs who had set up a throne at Nicæa. Theodore Lascaris had married Alexis’s daughter Anna, who died early in the reign of her husband, and her two successors in his affection are even less known to us than she. The first was Philippa, daughter of the King of Armenia; but, after giving birth to a boy, Philippa was, for some unstated but imaginable reason, sent back to the ruder Court of her father, and Maria, daughter of Yolande of Constantinople, occupied her place. Maria died, childless, after a few years, and, when Theodore himself departed in 1222, his only son (the child of Philippa) was a boy of eight years. The Empire was, therefore, wisely entrusted to a powerful and distinguished noble, John Ducas Vatatzes, and we at length reach an Empress of distinct and admirable personality.