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XI 
THE KINGDOM OF CYPRUS 
1369—1489 
 The murdered Peter I was succeeded on the throne of Cyprus by his only son,
another Peter, then a lad of fourteen commonly known by the diminutive form
of the name, Perrin. Of the new king's two surviving uncles, John, titular
prince of Antioch, was constable of Cyprus, while James was constable of
Jerusalem and subsequently his nephew's successor on the throne as James
I. The former, as the elder, became regent of the kingdom, as he had been
before when his brother had been absent from the realm. But until Peter II
came to marry, the most powerful influence on him, as in the affairs of the
kingdom at large, was that of his mother, queen Eleanor. This passionate
and tenacious woman was actuated by a single motive, that of avenging, despite
his (and her own) notorious infidelities, her husband's murder; and she was
prepared to employ for her purpose any instrument that came to hand. Her
immediate objective in 1369 was to retain control over the young king. 
 In the first few months of the new reign the late king's practice of raiding
the Mamluk sultan's dominions was maintained, and on July 10, 1369, Alexandria
was once more entered by a Cypriote squad ron, commanded by John of Morphou,
titular count of Edessa ("Rochas"), who had taken part in the ephemeral capture
of that city by Peter I in 1365. But in September of the following year peace
between Cyprus, Genoa, and Venice on the one hand and the sultan on the other
was agreed to in Famagusta, and a brief lull in warlike operations ensued,
to be followed by hostilities of an entirely differ ent kind. These were
not only to overshadow and darken the re mainder of the reign of Peter II;
they were to compromise irremedi ably the kingdom's very existence. They
resulted from no crusading activities or aspirations; they arose from a cause
as seemingly trivial as a dispute over protocol at one of the king's coronations.
For bibliography, see preceding chapter. 
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