In 1133 Fulk V, king of Jerusalem and count of Anjou, selected the son of his former neighbour, Duke William IX of Aquitaine, to succeed as prince of Antioch. Raymond of Poitiers was 34 years old and his new capital was a flourishing centre, once the third city of the Roman Empire. Massively fortified with immense walls and 400 towers, Antioch had been captured by the crusaders in 1098, only after a siege of eight months.

The strategic key to north Syria, Christian Antioch was increasingly threatened as the 12th century progressed. The danger from Moslem Aleppo intensified with the capture of Edessa, and in 1149 Raymond was killed in a battle against its ruler. The Byzantine emperors had a claim to the city -- it had been promised to them by the leaders of the First Crusade -- and occasionally led armies to Syria to demand recognition of their overlordship.

Antioch was the second state founded by the First Crusade, and under its earliest rulers, Bohemond and Tancred, it had had a strong Norman flavour. This influence had faded by the time of Raymond of Poitiers, as the settlers had taken over many of the manners and customs of the East.

Raymond found that he, like the other emigrants from Europe had quickley adapted to life in the East: 'We who were Occidentals have become Orientals ... we have already forgotten the places where we were born ... he who was once a stranger here is now a native,' wrote one of them in 1127. Some had married native women, 'a Syrian or an Armenian or even a Saracen who has received the grace of baptism'. An Arab emir told meeting a knight who had adopted the Muslim way of life, to the extent of employing cooks from Egypt and echewing port.

The Western settler, however, remained an alien minority who lived largely in the towns, and to those newly arrived from the West, full of crusading zeal, the Eastern manners of the settlers and their alliances with native princes represented a betrayal. Adaptations to the climate and political circumstances were only good sense; but for most Europeans, they were in reality only skin deep.