Comments by "Voryn Rosethorn" (@vorynrosethorn903) on "Rulers Who Were Actually Good — History Hijinks" video.

Ironically Christian sources are a great deal more favourable to him than Muslim. Probably because the Christians got stuck up on him being a chivalric ideal.
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@maple2524 @maple2524 Reynald de Chatillon was widely and deeply reviled within the crusader states, people forget that he was not picky with his targets attacking, plundering, murdering and worse orthodox civilians (the crusader states were almost totally reliant on the loyalty and good will of the majority orthodox population and had plenty of muslim subjects as well, both made up important contingents of Outremer’s military power with the orthodox infantry levy and converted ex-muslim light horsemen especially being vital forces to compliment and fill holes for a knight class that was always facing critical number shortages, to the point where Outremer was known a one of the few places in Christendom where young men of good birth and hot blood could reliably marry up, which is indeed how Reynald himself got his start),destroying holy sites and attacking people sheltering in churches as well as infamously torturing a catholic bishop. The fact that he wasn’t killed by his own side was largely thanks to backing from the crown as his actions were often as politicly cunning as they were reprehensible, with there being suggestion that he was sometimes used to take politically deniable action for the king given his justly appalling reputation. There were no tears shed with his death and many tied it along with the idea of Saladin being chivalrous, which suggests how much they liked the fellow. That said most of the sources came from people hostile to him but then there weren’t that many people around who weren’t hostile to him. The main argument these days is how much rather than if he did damage to the long term interests of the crusader states.
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Cyrus wrote his own history through clever propaganda and leveraging local interests to insure loyalty to him and a positive interpretation of his actions, he also knew how to construct a good myth that would sell well with the people at the time and was a good judge of character. The Jewish depiction also influences all interpretations very heavily, and they called him a messiah for freeing them from bondage. His actions however seem to be pragmatic and cynical tempered by a strong personal moral belief system but not an overwhelming one, counter to the standard goody two shoes depiction (which no good king has ever been as such a character leads to more abuses not less). Saladin was favoured by Christian sources Muslims ones are a lot less focused on him except for the ones he commissioned, they also are less blinded by the whole chivalric foe ideal and far more willing to depict him as a opportunist warlord who spent more time fighting other Muslim warlords than anything and tended to view fighting the crusaders a source of legitimacy rather than and end in itself. He is also depicted as very fickle and as giving mercy and favours in so far as he could see them benefiting him or his image. He was lucky that the crusaders tended to write off his acts of cruelty as they tended to effect the unimportant and lower class doing so even in the cases where they were Christian. The modern habit of self guilt also popularised a caricature of the Christian depiction of him in which he's the second coming of Christ (so long as Christ has bizarrely modern principles and lives in a medieval period that little resembles our own).
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@Nobody15534 Sources as in accounts from the time. He had a much less prominent role (compared to say Zengi or Baibars) and was mostly known for hattin and taking Jerusalem in popular histories up until the colonial period when he was one of the few muslims that europeans were likely to know of let alone be favourable toward. That plus later movies and books popularised an image of him drawn from Christian accounts and interpretations and differing depictions tended to build upon it rather than going back to the foundations. Modern movies like kingdom of heaven (and some tv documentaries around the same time) took things almost to the point of parody with him being shown as a near perfect paragon of virtue in contrast to crusaders whom they demonised to fit in with modern self hatred and dubious historical interpretations (which is to say that its so over the top as to be comical, especially considering they idealised Saladin, used muslim troops, ruled over muslim subjects in much the same way that muslims ruled over Christians and had muslim vassals).
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