The house of Savoy descended from Humbert or Umberto ‘of the White Hands’, hence the Ubertinidi or Humbertines. The house of Montferrat derived from one Aleramo, hence called the Aleramici, or Aleramics. The respective dynasties that assumed the rule of these regions each descended from semi-legendary, eponymous founders who had emerged to prominence in the tenth-century era of the control of northern Italy by the German Emperors of the Ottonian dynasty. The County of Savoy, located in the sub-Alpine Piedmont, a remnant of the old Burgundian Kingdom of Arles, was as much a part of what has become France as it was part of what has become Italy. In territorial terms, the Marquisate of Montferrat comprehended the western ends of Lombardy. Many segments of their Levantine involvements are well-known as individual episodes, but they form a more coherent picture when surveyed in totality 2. Representing regional principalities of their type, these two houses found in crusading and matrimony mechanisms that might extend their influence and prestige far beyond local realities. Their territories were contiguous, their situations were sometimes competitive, but their policies were almost in counterpoint with each other. There can be few better cases in point than the parallel dynastic houses of Montferrat and Savoy. Reversing that approach can offer fresh perspectives, especially when considering dynasties with a continuity of involvement. Such phenomena are usually studied in their Levantine context rather than in terms of the participants themselves and their varying home contexts. Indeed, the world of crusading itself generated new interactions of the two. These two dynastic strategies are familiar features in the annals of both Byzantium and the Crusades. The pursuit of foreign adventurism for dynastic advancement is probably about as old. The use of matrimonial alliances by monarchs and princes is as old as royalty itself. Crusading and matrimony in the eastern mediterranean: the dynastic policies of Montferrat and Svoy 1
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