In 1080, an Armenian Princedom or “Barony” was founded in Cilicia and placed under the authority of Prince Rupen, related, so they say, to the Bagratids.
The Rupenids allied themselves to the French crusaders and, in the person of Prince Leon I (also called “The Magnificent”), put on the royal crown in 1198.
This crown was offered by Pope Innocent III and the emperor Henry IV of Germany, son of Frederick Barbarossa. It was placed on the head of Leon I by the Bavarian Cardinal Conrad von Wittellbach who came to Cilicia for the occasion.
Leon, I reigned from 1198 to 1219 with Queen Sybille, who belonged to the royal house of the Lusignans of Cyprus, originally from Poitiers, and ancestors of the La Rochefoucaulds.
The Byzantine Emperor Alexius III Angelus also sent a crown to Leon together with the warning, “Remember that Constantinople is neared than Rome.”
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