The Khitan ruler Yelü Liuge is expelled as a result of an internal strife in the so-called Liao kingdom of the Khitans, or Eastern Xia, and seeks support from Genghis Khan.

The Khitans suffer a counterattack from Jin and flee to Goryeo without permission from the Mongols.

Puxian Wannu capitulates to Muqali's army and sends his son Tege (Tiěgē) as a hostage in 1216.

However, he revolts soon after that and flees to an island while the Mongol army invades Liaoxi and Liaodong.

Afonso II of Portugal captures Alcácer do Sal from the Moors in 1217.

Accompanied by an army and a papal legate, Peter subsequently embarks at Brindisi on ships furnished by the Venetians.

King Inge of Norway falls ill in Nidaros in 1217 and appoints his younger half-brother, Skule Bårdsson, earl and leader of the army.

Inge dies on April 23 and is buried in Nidaros Cathedral.

He is succeeded as king by the thirteen-year-old Haakon Haakonsson, an illegitimate grandson of king Sverre, who had been raised at the courts of king Inge and earl Haakon since they became aware of his existence in 1206.

Skule will continue as earl and de facto ruler for the next few years.

King Andrew II of Hungary had married Yolanda, the niece of Henry I, the Emperor of Constantinople, in February 1215.

When the Emperor Henry I died on July 11, 1216, Andrew had planned to acquire the imperial throne, but the barons of the Latin Empire had proclaimed his father-in-law, Peter of Courtenay, their emperor.

Andrew has decided nonetheless to fulfill his father's oath and makes preparations for a Crusade to the Holy Land in 1217, one of several foreign misadventures that will prove costly to Hungary.

William Marshal is declared the protector of the nine-year-old Henry III in the aftermath of John's death.

The civil war continues until royalist victories at the battles of Lincoln and …

…Dover in 1217.

Louis, on landing in England the previous year, had captured all of the Cinque Ports in the southeast, except for Dover, where Hubert de Burgh has stubbornly held out against a siege of many months.

Peter II of Courtenay, failing in his attempt to conquer Durazzo from Theodore Doukas for his Venetian creditors, sets out overland toward Constantinople but …

…is seized in the mountains near Elbasan and imprisoned by Theodore, who most likely executes him after an imprisonment of at least two years.

Pope Innocent III, having since 1208 planned a crusade in order to destroy the Ayyubid Empire and to recapture Jerusalem, had in April 1213 issued the papal bull Quia maior, calling all of Christendom to join a new crusade.

This had been followed in 1215 by another papal bull, the Ad Liberandam.

Innocent had in 1215 summoned the Fourth Lateran Council, where, along with the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Raoul of Merencourt, he had discussed the recovery of the Holy Land, among other church business.

Pope Innocent wants it to be led by the papacy, as the First Crusade should have been, in order to avoid the mistakes of the Fourth Crusade, which had been taken over by the Venetians.

Innocent plans for the crusaders to meet in 1216 at Brindisi and to ensure that the crusaders will have ships and weapons prohibits trade with the Muslims.

Every crusader will receive an indulgence, including those who simply help pay the expenses of a crusader, but do not go on crusade themselves.

The message of the crusade had been preached in France by Robert of Courçon; however, unlike other Crusades, not many French knights have joined, as they are already fighting the Albigensian Crusade against the heretical Cathar sect in southern France.

Oliver of Cologne had preached the crusade in Germany, and King Frederick II of Sicily, a Hohenstaufen and grandson of Frederick I Barbarossa, twice crowned king of the Germans, had in 1215 attempted to join.

Frederick was the last monarch Innocent wanted to join the movement, as he had challenged the Papacy (and would do so in the years to come).

Innocent dies, however, in 1216.

Honorius III, who succeeds Innocent on July 28, immediately activates Innocent's plan to restore the kingdom of Jerusalem, organizing crusading armies led by King Andrew II of Hungary and duke Leopold VI of Austria.