Tancred, Prince of Galilee

Tancred of Galilee (also Tancred the Marquis; c. 1075 – 5 or 12 December 1112) was an Italian nobleman of Frankish origin, counted amongst the four main leaders of the First Crusade. He is credited as the first Christian to enter Jerusalem after its conquest in 1099. Present at the foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Tancred became Prince of Galilee and regent of the Principality of Antioch in his uncle Bohemond's behalf. He then married princess Cecilie of France, thus becoming son-in-law to King Philip I of the Franks, and brother-in-law to King Fulk of Jerusalem (Cecilie's half-brother).

Despite his usual misidentification as an Italo-Norman, it is well established that Tancred's link to the Norman House of Hauteville was solely through his mother Emma (a sister of Bohemond I of Antioch). His long debated paternal lineage, on the other hand, has since been placed in the Northern-Italian ruling house of the Aleramids, a family of Frankish origin.

His first biography, the Gesta Tancredi (c. 1120) by Ralph of Caen, was later fictionalized by Torquato Tasso in Jerusalem Delivered (1581), followed by Claudio Monteverdi in Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624), by Voltaire in Tancrède (1760), and by Gioachino Rossini in Tancredi (1813), among many others. His imagined portrait has also been represented throughout European art history, including by Tintoretto, Lorenzo Lippi, Nicolas Poussin, Luca Giordano, and others.