Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Melisende of Tripoli


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   no consensus.  Sandstein  06:16, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Melisende of Tripoli

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Speedy A7 declined. No cited claim of notability; she died in a convent with no indication of an influence on history. No hits on Google Scholar; hits on Google Books are a Wikipedia echo or mostly for the aunt or passing mentions of existence. Wtshymanski (talk) 20:31, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep Historians such as Runciman write about her and so she is notable. Colonel Warden (talk) 03:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Her influence on history (while admittedly somewhat slight) is in fact noted in the article. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:43, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment by nominator Some examples would really help - Google Books turns up mostly Melisende of Jerusalem, the aunt. But if her marriage never came about and she died in a convent, how much influence could she have had? --Wtshymanski (talk) 22:22, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, her parents were among the highest crusader nobility. Her mother Hodierna was the daughter of one king, and related to three others, and her father Raymond II and brother Raymond III were Counts of Tripoli (and were related to the kings of France and various other French dynasties). Okay, so what, what does that make Melisende...it makes her very interesting to the Byzantine emperor, who liked to consider the crusader states as his protectorates. If she had married him, he could have exerted his influence in Tripoli, which was much closer to Jerusalem. Instead the emperor married the princess of Antioch, which may have been better from Jerusalem's point of view, but the count of Tripoli was still insulted. He attacked Cyprus, a Byzantine island, which had also been attacked before, from Antioch, and was later conquered by crusaders and turned into a crusader kingdom. (This is all inter-related, of course.) Meanwhile, since the emperor married into the princely family of Antioch, Antioch ended up as essentially a Byzantine province. Jerusalem was able to remain independent, more so than it likely would have if the emperor had married Melisende. Jerusalem still depended on Byzantium for military and financial support, but it could request this as an equal partner, not a vassal. Tripoli also remained independent, and Raymond III was one of the major players in the history of Jerusalem in the late 12th century. If Melisende married the emperor the history of all the crusader states would have been very different. There is another note in the article that either she or her mother were loved "from afar" by Jaufre Rudel, and Edmond Rostand used her as the main character of a play. As for Google, I can't currently read the one result I'm getting on Google Scholar (but I can check it in a few days), while Google Books has a couple of dozen useful mentions. So, as I said, her influence is somewhat slight, in the sense that she is more important for what she didn't do than for what she did, but this event had a large and long-lasting impact on the crusader states and Byzantium, and wouldn't it be useful to know more about one of the women central to it? Adam Bishop (talk) 21:17, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds a little speculative and crystal-ballish; maybe Hitler's assassin died of measles at age 7. I suppose the question boils down to "Does she get significant coverage by the people writing histories of the era?" We don't normally list people for things they might have done, only for what they did. --Wtshymanski (talk) 04:24, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Even aside from the unecessary reductio ad Hitlerum, that's hardly the same - if Hitler had two possible assassins, about whom we knew quite a lot, and one of them ended up being chosen to assassinate him, it would still be interesting to know why the other one wasn't chosen. If Melisende died of measles at age 7 and had absolutely no influence on the politics of four separate states, then no, of course we wouldn't have an article about her. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:35, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Yet another nomination to delete an article on a medieval personage based on an internet search. When will people realise that the internet is not omniscient? -- Necrothesp (talk) 23:22, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment by nominator - Did Runciman write anything substantial about this person? Since she died young in a convent, she can't have had much influence on events. Google Scholar produces exactly 1 hit and it's an article about mosaics, not about the subject of this article. If it's not notable enough for the Internet, is it notable enough for Wikipedia? --Wtshymanski (talk) 00:59, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The Google Books preview of "A History of the Crusades: The kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187" shows one page discussing this individual, mostly discussing her non-marriage and early death. The preview I can see is only of page 359, at the end of which she's "fading away". --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:12, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, so what? Crusade scholarship does not begin and end with Runciman. The article is insufficiently sourced, but that can be fixed. "Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative" by Natasha R. Hodgson would be a good source, she talks about Melisende for a few pages. There are a few more recent histories of the crusades than Runciman (by Riley-Smith, Mayer, Richard, Phillips, Tyerman, etc etc), they may also have some info. Of course, everything that is known about her comes from William of Tyre and John Kinnamos, I think, so all the secondary sources say pretty much the same thing. But I can attempt to improve the article when I get a chance. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:35, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If a noted and respected specialist in the era gives her only part of a page in a 5-volume history, doesn't that indicate the microscope has to be turned up pretty high to even resolve this person's influence? This is not a specialist Wiki on the history of the Crusades. If all the modern scholars are relying on the same two primary sources, there's not going to be any more details.  I've been having a great deal of trouble with the notion of "notability" on the Wikipedia over the last several weeks - it appears in practice to mean something different from what I had interpreted it to mean. I thought my difficulty was confined to subjects on which I thought I knew a little, but it appears to be the same on subjects where I have no knowledge or interest. This discussion is illuminating. --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:01, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 03:19, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.