Count of Champagne
Instead, the Pope looked for nobles willing to lead the Crusade, much in the same manner as the First was. Theobald III, Count of Champagne was seen as the ideal candidate to lead the crusade. His mother Marie of France was a daughter of Louis VII of France and his first wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, making Marie a paternal half-sister of Philip II of France and maternal half-sister of Richard I of England, thus allowing Theobald to claim two former leaders of the Crusades as his uncles. His older brother Henry II, Count of Champagne had already served as consort to Queen regnant Isabella I of Jerusalem, giving Theobald another prominent crusading relation.