Pons' grandfather, Raymond IV, was the first prominent nobleman to join the First Crusade in 1095. His attempts to secure the supreme command of the military campaign failed, neither could he keep the fortresses that he conquered from the local Muslim rulers in northern Syria in 1098. Northern Syria developed into a crusader state, the Principality of Antioch, under the rule of Raymond's rivals, the Norman Bohemond and Tancred. Unlike Bohemond and Tancred, Raymond accepted the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos's suzerainty and acted as the Emperor's lieutenant, but the Byzantines could not put an end to the Normans' rule in northern Syria. After the crusaders captured Jerusalem, Raymond refused to rule the Holy City, thus a new crusader state, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, developed in Palestine under the rule of two brothers from Lower Lorraine, Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin of Boulogne (or Baldwin I).