Hethumian

The Hethumids, also called the House of Lampron, were the Armenian dynasty that ruled the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia from 1226 to 1341. As barons of Lampron the family had long rivalled the Rubenid kings, until Hethum I married Queen Isabella, daughter of Leo I, and inherited the crown in 1226.

Hethum submitted to the Mongol Empire and travelled to the Great Khan's court, forging an Armeno-Mongol alliance against the Mamluks; it brought decades of campaigning, including the devastating Mamluk victory at Mari in 1266. Under Hethum and his successors Cilician Armenia reached its height, its port of Ayas linking Mediterranean and East Asian trade and its nobility drawing close to the Crusader states.

From the early fourteenth century the kingdom shrank under repeated Mamluk invasions, while the abdications and murders around Hethum II exposed court factionalism. Leo IV, the last Hethumid king, was killed in 1341 and the crown passed to Lusignan cousins from Cyprus; the remnant kingdom finally fell to the Mamluks in 1375.