Henry I came to the Cypriot throne as an infant in 1218, and the regency government that effectively ran the kingdom through much of this period maintained coin production at Nicosia under conditions that were anything but stable — the island was repeatedly drawn into the factional disputes between the Ibelin and Lusignan factions that convulsed the Latin East during the 1220s and 1230s. Billon deniers of this reign are notoriously variable in silver content, reflecting the fiscal pressures of a small crusader state managing expensive military obligations on a Mediterranean island economy.
Henry I came to the Cypriot throne as an infant in 1218, and the regency government that effectively ran the kingdom through much of this period maintained coin production at Nicosia under conditions that were anything but stable — the island was repeatedly drawn into the factional disputes between the Ibelin and Lusignan factions that convulsed the Latin East during the 1220s and 1230s. Billon deniers of this reign are notoriously variable in silver content, reflecting the fiscal pressures of a small crusader state managing expensive military obligations on a Mediterranean island economy.