Deus... Vult?

[StarSword]

Not "Deus Vult", it's "Deus pole-vult".

 

[TMSaxon]

Actually the crusades were largely economic, political and religious in nature, not about over population.

But first they were defensive in origin, Basileus Alexios Komnenos requested aid in dealing with the invading Seljuk muslims and he sort of got it at first.

Whilst he did ask for aid, what he wanted and asked for were mercenaries and knights that could be spared from Europe so that he could reconquer Anatolia/Asia Minor. What happened was the First Crusade, a truly unbelievable series of events that by most laws of averages should have completely failed, but that somehow succeeded. Although, by smashing the Seljuks in Anatolia a couple of times, it did allow Alexios to seize the coastal fortresses and cities that were abandoned by the Turks due to lack of manpower, so yes, I suppose he did kind of get what he asked for.
To be honest, I'd like Crusades to be reworked so goals can shift, because in every major Crusade I can think of, except the Third, the conquest goal (and therefore the outcome) did change - the First had the initial premise of helping the Christians in the East (arguably the Roman Empire recovering Anatolia), then shifted to conquering and holding Antioch, Edessa, Tripoli, and Jerusalem, the Second was originally about recovering Edessa but became instead about conquering Damascus (the sheer idiocy of that one still astounds me), the Fourth was meant to be about conquering Egypt but got diverted twice, firstly to Croatia, then to Constantinople (the Angeloi to me are still the worst dynasty to sit any throne ever), and so on and so fourth. I suspect though that this will never be changed, their perfect opportunities for having done so having long since slipped them by.