The assumption that the threat to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem remained unchanged in intensity throughout the kingdom's entire existence and all of its territory in effect limited the study of the Frankish castles in the Levant, turning it into a stereotypic and a-historical discussion. Many scholars preferred to describe the spatial distribution of the castles and their architectural features as a deterministic adaptation of European building styles (or of local ones, depending on which school of thought the scholar adhered to) to specific sites, while ignoring the military challenges faced by the kingdom and the high cost which the construction of castles entailed. A few analyses try to differentiate between the castles either by type of ownership (private lords, as opposed to castles built by the military orders, etc.) or by the landscape in which they were erected (on level ground, on the slope of a hill, atop a mountain, etc.). Thus did the discussion of the development of the Franks' most expensive and most complicated military platform become a narrow exchange of opinions, which almost completely ignored the enemies who were the reason for its establishment.

This stereotypical and a-historical approach is also conspicuous in the maps marking the sites of the Crusader castles. Such location maps, which have accompanied research of the Crusades since the beginning of the twelfth century and even earlier, generally place all Crusader castles on one map, treating the entire ‘Crusader period’ as a single and quasi-uniform period.