Chapter Text
They endured.
Through court treachery and whispered betrayals. Through the slow, bitter unraveling of trust in nobles who once pledged their loyalty. Through the heartache of losing their first child before he had even drawn breath. Through the realization that the very halls they fought to protect harbored shadows—family, blood, that turned cold and silent behind their backs.
Baldwin and Ysolde endured.
He, the king with a body slowly betraying him. She, the woman who chose him anyway—sought no crown, only the soul beneath the suffering.
There were days when the royal council spoke over him, dismissed his orders with thinly veiled condescension. When his voice, once thunder across the battlefield, seemed to echo hollow in the court of Jerusalem. When the glances cast his way spoke of succession, not service. Of how soon, not how strong.
And yet—he endured.
Even as his fingers stiffened to stone and his legs grew frail beneath him. Even as fever burned and lesions wept, Baldwin still rose. And when he could not rise, he commanded from the bed. His mind never dimmed. His will never broke. Not for Saladin. Not for treason. Not for death.
The Saracens grew bolder. Villages fell. Aleppo was swallowed whole. But Baldwin answered—time and again. Strategy for strategy. Fire for fire. Not as a dying boy grasping at legacy, but as a sovereign who refused to yield. Who wielded his agony as armor.
And still—love remained.
Ysolde, who once served as his physician, stood at his side as his wife, his fiercest confidante. Through nights of fevered delirium, she bathed his wounds. Through battles that separated them, she prayed and wrote and watched the horizon. She feared losing him—but never left him.
They were never promised a normal life. But they were gifted a piece of heaven.
Baudry.
A son born of defiance, named in honor of his father. The child he dared to hold, even when the world whispered of contagion and sin. The child who smiled without fear at the face of a leper.
They were not alone.
There were those who stayed. Men like Raymond of Tripoli, knights and squires who rode with him into dust and fire. Women who served Ysolde with quiet reverence, who saw more than scars. They had fewer allies now—but truer ones. And that was enough.
Society believed lepers were cursed. That they had sinned, and their penance would end only in the grave.
But Baldwin repented.
He knelt before God. But he rose—again and again—to fight.
For Jerusalem.
For the poor and the sick, the exiled and the betrayed.
For his wife.
For his son.
For a kingdom he might not live to see free, but one he refused to let die enslaved.
And in the moments between war and fever, siege and betrayal, he still found time to love. To smile. To hold Ysolde in the quiet, where no court could reach them. To whisper stories to Baudry under moonlight. To be more than a king. To be a man.
They endured.
And in doing so, they forged something stronger than legacy.
They forged eternity.