Just when I was afraid I’d have to watch reruns on TV tonight. Whee!! More historical soap operay goodness. Now, if you could only get them to stop naming all their kids the same thing.
::does happy dance:: Yay!
Thank you!! I missed earlier episodes, not joining until Marozia and the Villains. But I’m clicking Save and will read earlier episodes in my copious (:eek:) free time.
(But I prefer handheld books. I hope you have a publisher, Mississippiene.)
I love these threads.
Have you considered doing any of the Scandanavian royalty?
When last we saw them, Maria Porphyrogenita and her husband Renier were holed up in the Hagia Sophia, joined by a number of supporters, in open defiance of the regime of Maria’s stepmother, Maria of Antioch, and Empress Maria’s lover, Alexios protosebastos. They were protected by the Patriarch Theodosios, who Niketas calls a “most holy man” with “thick eyebrows”. Alexios protosebastos turned his wrath on the patriarch, whom he had confined in a monastery. He would’ve had Theodosios ousted from his position as patriarch entirely, had not Theodosios powerful supporters within the Imperial family. Finally, Alexios protosebastos, that “crooked serpent”, was forced to back down and release the patriarch. Theodosios went straightaway to the Hagia Sophia to negotiate some kind of truce.
Maria Porphyrogenita’s supporters had come to blows with the supporters of the Empress Maria. Three priests encouraged the riot, one holding aloft an icon of Christ, another a cross, and the third a sacred banner. Patriarch Theodosios appeared, clad in his robes and holding a bible, calming the crowd and counseling reconciliation.
Desperate to end the conflict, the Empress and her cronies offered the rebels amnesty, which was accepted. Renier and Maria Porphyrogenita returned to the palace. Their supporters, which included Manuel and Ioannes, Andronikos Komnenos’ two grown sons by his first wife, were pardoned.
The tumult that had rocked Constantinople was just one manifestation of the anger and corruption that was rotting the city down to its core. The dead emperor Manuel’s pro-foreign policy had caused plenty of resentment in the populace, who did not delight in having foreign empresses, foreign caesars, foreign mercenaries walking the streets, foreigners whispering in the emperor’s ear, outsiders and heretics and other malcontents snatching up glories and dignities for themselves. Now the emperor was a callow boy, easily ruled by his mother and her lover.
Constantinople was ripe for the picking, and Andronikos Komnenos had waited his whole life for just such an opportunity.
Not content with going bald and enjoying a retirement in Paphlagonia with Theodora and their children, Andronikos sent out letters to the most important of Byzantine lords and cousins, letters filled with arguments “more devastating than the blows of seige engines and more powerful than any battering ram”. He put himself forward as an alternative regent to the Empress Maria and her boytoy, and began marching on Constantinople.
His approach began to worry Empress Maria and Alexios protosebastos, especially when Andronikos rallied the people of Nikomedia to his cause. They dispatched Andronikos Angelos to take him out.
Andronikos Angelos was the son of Theodora Komnene (herself a daughter of Emperor Alexios I) by her low-born but handsome husband, Konstantinos Angelos. He was also the father of six sons, among them Isaakios and Alexios Angelos. He set out in high style to kick Andronikos Komnenos’ ass, and was humiliatingly defeated in the best slapstick fashion by a crack team of misfits: a eunuch leading a contingent of Paphlagonian soldiers and a small but tenacious band of “farmers unfit for warfare.”
Andronikos Angelos knew that he might as well kiss his ass goodbye if he returned to Constantinople in defeat. He and his family snuck into a boat and defected to Andronikos Komnenos, hoping for more mercy from their former enemy than they could expect from the Empress Maria and Alexios protosebastos. Now joined by this motley group of defectors, Andronikos marched on Constantinople itself. The populace, desperate for anything other than Empress Foreign Whore and her lover Fop Snores-A-Lot, rallied to his cause.
Panicked, Alexios *protosebastos *decided to fight off Andronikos by sea, but this fell apart when his cousin the naval hero Andronikos Kontostephanos turned against him and took command of the fleet himself.
Andronikos Komnenos also wrote to the Patriarch Theodosios, proclaiming his loyalty to the young emperor Alexios II, and assuring the patriarch that his only desire was to uproot Alexios *protosebastos *from power and make sure that the Empress Maria was sent into an honorable religious retirement. It was the patriarch himself who handed the city over to him in May 1182.
Maria Porphyrogenita and her husband Renier, having welcomed Andronikos, lived long enough to be among his first victims. Andronikos corrupted Pterygeonites, a eunuch servant, with “seductive promises” 1 and got him to pour poison into Maria and Renier’s cups, slowly killing them both.
As for Alexios protosebastos, his end came swiftly. He was captured in the middle of the night, imprisoned, and blinded. One by one, the last quivering obstacles in Andronikos’ way were falling.
When Andronikos finally met young Alexios II and the Empress Maria in person shortly thereafter, he put on a grand show: he wept, bowed before the boy, embraced his feet, and acted in every way the doting uncle. When Alexios II was formally crowned emperor on May 16, 1182, he was carried to the Hagia Sophia on Andronikos’ shoulders.
But if Patriarch Theodosios thought he would have any say-so in Andronikos’ reign, that notion vanished almost instantly. While talking to the patriarch, Andronikos complained that it was such a drag being the last remaning guardian of the young emperor, dismissing the patriarch himself, who had been appointed by Manuel to guide Alexios II. Patriarch Theodosios replied that as far as he was concerned, ever since Andronikos had entered the city, he had laid down his charge and counted Alexios II among the dead.
Footnotes:
- I’m not sure what Niketas means by this but I’m creeped out.
SOURCES:
Angold, Michael.* Church and society in Byzantium under the Comneni, 1081-1261*, 2000.
Yay! 
Huzzah!
More! For Og’s sake, MORE!
With Alexios *protosebastos *gone and the foreign empress neutralized, the Byzantine Greeks had finally seen the downfall of the hated ‘Latins’ and ‘heretics’ who’d had so much influence over their empire during the reign of the Emperor Manuel. Their resentment and jubilation at being freed from foreign control exploded in April 1182 into a full-scale massacre of the remaining foreigners in Constantinople.
The historian William of Tyre, who interviewed refugees from the massacre, gives us a vivid account of the slaughter. The Greeks descended on the Latin Quarter and, encouraged by their priests, slaughtered and plundered all in their path. Those ‘Latins’, mostly Pisans and Genoese merchants, who could escape did so by seizing a number of galleys and sailing away. Those unable to flee were cut down in the streets; the sick were dragged from their beds and murdered; priests were killed in the sanctuary of their churches. The papal legate, Cardinal John, was beheaded and his severed head was tied to a dog’s tail and dragged through the streets. Some of the refugees in their commandeered ships took revenge by sacking Byzantine monasteries in the Aegean sea. Others, William of Tyre tells us, simply fled back to Italy or to the Crusader states, grateful to still be alive.
In the aftermath, survivors were rounded up and sold to the Turks as slaves. For the time being, the Byzantines had vented their fury on the hated Latins.
Meanwhile, Andronikos busily arranged the marriage of the daughter, named Irene, that Theodora Komnene had borne him, to Alexios, the illegitimate son of the Emperor Manuel and Manuel’s niece, Theodora Vatatzaina 1. The patriarch Theodosios, horrified by this incestuous union of double-Komnenoi, turned his back on Constantinople and retired to a little island called Terebinthos.
An imperial cousin, Ioannes Komnenos Vatatzes 2, who was residing in Philadelphia, rebelled against Andronikos. When Andronikos threatened him, Vatatzes told him to bring it. Andronikos replied that he should consider it already brung. He sent out Andronikos Lapardas 3 to deal with Vatatzes, but Vatatzes’ sons Ioannes and Manuel routed Lapardas. But when Vatatzes himself took ill and died, his rebellion died with him. His sons fled to the sultan’s court at Konya, and from there tried to flee to Sicily, but were captured en route and blinded.
Another rebellion emerged almost immediately, this one much closer to home. Andronikos’ estwhile allies, Andronikos Angelos (and his sons), Andronikos Kontostephanos (and his sons), and Basileios Kamateros 4 banded together with the intention of taking him out. Word of their plotting got to Andronikos. Angelos and his sons 5 narrowly escaped Constantinople by fishing boat, while Kontostephanos, his four sons, and Basileios Kamateros were all captured and blinded.
By now, Andronikos’ body count was quickly approaching that of your typical Chuck Norris action movie, but the last two obstacles in his path to the imperial throne were also the biggest: Empress Maria, and her son Alexios II.
Empress Maria had been caught sending letters to her brother-in-law, King Bela III of Hungary 6, asking him to attack Byzantine territory. She was imprisoned in a cramped dungeon near the monastery of St. Diomedes, guarded by sneering jailers, “pining with hunger and thirst”, and under constant threat of execution. By this point, Andronikos had blinded, imprisoned, exiled, or terrified into submission anyone who had the power or will to stand up for her. He had her condemned as a traitor, and her own son Alexios II was forced to sign his mother’s death decree.
Andronikos charged his own eldest son, Manuel, and his brother-in-law, the *sebastos *Georgios 7, with executing Maria of Antioch. Not being eager to have the blood of this beautiful and pathetic empress on their hands, they stalled for time. All they did was delay the inevitable. Andronikos enlisted his crony, Konstantinos Tripsykhos, and Pterygeonites, the same eunuch who had poisoned Maria Porphyrogenita and Renier of Montferrat. They strangled Empress Maria, and she who was “a vision of beauty unto men”, according to Niketas, was buried in the sand. Andronikos, mindful of how quickly public opinion can deify young and beautiful women, had her official portraits painted over to show her as a haggard crone.
Now there was only the minor matter of the young emperor, Alexios II. Andronikos gathered his loyal minions and said to them, “No good thing is a multitude of lords; let there be one lord, one king.”
September 1183. In the dark of night, Stephanos Hagiochristophorites 8, Theodoros Dadibrenos, and the same Konstantinos Tripsykhos who had killed his mother pounced on Alexios II and strangled him with a bow-string. When the boy was brought before Andronikos, he kicked the corpse and mocked him, calling Alexios II the son of a “perjurer” (Manuel I) and a “harlot” (Maria of Antioch). Alexios II’s corpse was then dumped into the ocean.
Nothing and no one was left in Andronikos’ path.
Footnotes:
- Because clearly, what this world needed was the offspring of those collapsed Komnenoi bloodlines.
- The son of Theodoros Vatatzes and Eudokia Komnene (the sister of Emperor Manuel). He was the brother of Manuel’s niece-lover, Theodora.
- He had been one of the co-conspirators with Maria Porphyrogenita and Renier in their plot to overthrow Alexios protosebastos.
- Basileios’ brother Ioannes Kamateros had been another of Lapardas’ and Maria Porphyrogenita’s co-conspirators back in the day.
- Including Isaakios and Alexios Angelos, who are going to be VERY important later on, as you will see.
- Remember him? He had been Maria Porphyrogenita’s fiance for like eleventy billion years, before finally marrying Maria of Antioch’s half-sister, Agnes de Chatillon.
- I can only suppose this Georgios was the brother of Andronikos’ unnamed first wife, and thusly Manuel’s uncle.
- A nasty piece of work if there ever was one, Hagiochristophorites was the same courtier who’d been whipped and mutilated some years before by the Emperor Manuel for the crime of trying to marry a noblewoman.
SOURCES:
Nicol, Donald. Byzantium and Venice: a study in diplomatic and cultural relations, 1992.
I did not know about the massacre of Latins. It gives a little more sense to the upcoming Fourth Crusade. I can’t see wait to see your coverage of that.
By 1184, Andronikos had amassed a larger body count than most Chuck Norris movies. Now past sixty, this old rogue and adventurer had finally become emperor of Byzantium.
As soon as word got out that Alexios II was dead, rebellions sprang up all over the place. The general Andronikos Lapardas turned on Andronikos. “Soldiers who abhorred Andronikos streamed into the city” of Nikaia, including Isaakios Angelos. Andronikos I and his general, Alexios Vranas, laid seige to the city to no avail. Nikaia was absurdly well defended, and her defenders screamed down insults from the city’s walls, calling Andronikos “a butcher, a bloodthirsty dog, a rotten old man, undying evil”, and more like that.
So Andronikos had Isaakios Angelos’ mother, Euphrosyne Kastamonitissa, brought from Constantinople, and placed her atop the battering ram. The defenders continued raining missiles down upon Andronikos’ forces, taking care not to strike Euphrosyne’s prone body. That night, some of the Nikaians slipped out of the city, set fire to the seige engines, and rescued the lady Euphrosyne. But it became sadly obvious that Nikaia could not hold out forever. Isaakios Angelos entered negotiations with Andronikos, who offered them mercy if they surrendered. The Nikaians emerged from their city walls, waving olive branches in surrender. Andronikos went back on his word; he exiled some, impaled others, had others thrown from the city walls and killed. Isaakios Angelos he forgave and sent back to Constantinople.
Andronikos beseiged another rebellious city, Prusa, and here he was even crueller. One of Prusa’s defenders was Isaakios Angelos’ younger brother, Theodoros, “a youth with the first down of hair on his cheeks”; Andronikos had him blinded and mounted on an ass, with orders that he be left to wander wherever the donkey took him. Theodoros would’ve died had not the Turks come across him, took pity on him, and tended to his wounds. Others Andronikos hung from trees, or horribly mutilated.
Back in Constantinople, Andronikos busied himself with horse racing, women, and intrigue. His old lover, Theodora, convinced him to ransom her nephew, Isaakios Doukas Komnenos, a nasty piece of work if there ever was one. Isaakios, a maternal grandson of Emperor Manuel’s brother Isaakios, had been appointed Governor of Cilicia in 1174, and had married an Armenian princess1. He was a wet behind the ears brat who was driven out of Armenian territory by his wife’s cousin Rupen III and the Selcuk sultan Kılıç Arslan, captured, and imprisoned for several years. Upon being freed, Isaakios headed to Cyprus with forged documents proclaiming him to be the governor. Once entrenched on this island, Isaakios of Cyprus proved to be the worst sort of tyrant, murdering, despoiling virgins, and stealing all the wealth he could lay hands on.
Theodora’s influence over Andronikos seems to have waned after this. As emperor, Andronikos enjoyed a host of courtesans and even dined on crocodile meat to maintain his virility. Most troubling of all, he went all creepy uncle on Alexios II’s little child-bride-widow, Agnes of France. Although she was only eleven-years-old, and he was more than old enough to be her father or even grandfather, Andronikos married her. It’s worth noting that in an era when women often married much older men, that even his contemporaries were grossed out by this pairing. Niketas lamented that “he who stank of the dark ages was not ashamed to lie unlawfully” with the “red-cheeked and tender” Agnes, who had “not yet completed her eleventh year.”
Meanwhile, a Venetian embassy arrived in Constantinople. The Doge was eager to fill the vacuum left by the massacred Genoese and Pisans, and sent the shrewd brothers Giovanni and Enrico Dandolo to negotiate with Andronikos. Enrico Dandolo was already by then an old man, and a veteran of negotiating with Greeks, although he detested them as a race. In 1171, Emperor Manuel had seized Venetian goods and ships in Constantinople, and in the aftermath Dandolo had been sent to negotiate with him. Aside from his sharp political wits and hatred for Greeks, Dandolo had another feature commented upon by every chronicler: he was blind.
Legend alleged that he had been blinded at the court of Manuel, and this was the cause for his grudge against the Byzantines. This does not seem to have been the case. A contemporary chronicle, Historia Ducum Veneticorum, took pains to point out that Dandolo and the other ambassadors in 1171 had been returned in good health. Also, he does not seem to have gone totally blind until 1183, as that is when he stops signing documents himself, instead having notaries sign them. Considering the periodic massacres and harassment of his countrymen by the Byzantines, I don’t think you really have to invent stories to come up with reasons for Enrico Dandolo to hate the Greeks.
Andronikos had won his throne on his anti-foreign stance, but he needed the Italian merchants for revenue as much as for convenient scapegoats. He cut the Venetians a fat welfare check to pay them back for 1171 and allowed them to inhabit the aptly-named Venetian Quarter of Constantinople.
So for now, the AIMA prophecy had fulfilled itself and was destined to start over. A (Alexios I), I (Ioannes II), M (Manuel I), A (Alexios II), and now A again (Andronikos I). This meant the next in the chain had to be an I (iota). Andronikos bypassed his eldest son, Manuel, in favor of his second son, Ioannes2. But fate had a way of overturning his carefully laid plans…
- An English chronicler, Benedict of Peterborough, claims that he murdered his first wife, but who knows.
- The same one who had been conceived on his escape from prison years ago.
SOURCES:
Madden, Thomas. Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 2006.
Polemis, Demetrios. The Doukai: a contribution to Byzantine prosopography, 1968.
And the story continues…
I think the only advantage to adultery is getting some extra blood into the family trees so it isn’t quite so christmas wreathy:eek:
My great^30ish grand-children sure are bastards… munches popcorn
So our sordid tale contines with Andronikos I Komnenos as master of the Byzantine Empire, dawdling his child-bride on his knee, and in his off hours making steady progress on thinning out the hordes of younger Komnenoi.
Among these kinsmen was Alexios Komnenos 1, the illegitimate son of Emperor Manuel I by his niece, Theodora Vatatzaina. Alexios had recently married Irene, Andronikos’ daughter by Theodora Komnene. Andronikos arrested his son-in-law, had him thrown in prison, and blinded. When Irene appeared in public wearing “tatters with her hair shorn” in mourning, according to Niketas Choniates, Andronikos banished her in disgust. He felt that his daughter should feel as he felt, and if he hated her husband, then Irene ought to hate him, too.
Andronikos should’ve kept a closer eye on another cousin, Alexios Komnenos (yes, yet another Alexios Komnenos), the cupbearer and nephew of Emperor Manuel I. After Andronikos’ rise to power, Alexios the Cupbearer had fled to Sicily, where he found refuge at the court of King William II.
William II of Sicily is an interesting character in his own right. His sobriquet was “The Good”, as his father William I was “The Bad”, but as their policies did not much differ, it seems that the father simply had the bad luck to rule during interesting times, as they say. By blood, William II was of Norman, Iberian, and Arab 2 descent, and he ruled a kingdom as culturally diverse as he himself. Palaces ringed the royal city of Palermo like necklaces, palaces decorated with gardens, fountains, menageries, and splendid Byzantine mosaics. Within his court, one might’ve seen William II himself sitting cross-legged, wearing a caftan and surrounded by musicians, dancers, and onlookers playing chess, as depicted in the mosaics. His forebearers had been patrons of art and learning (his grandfather Roger II had commissioned a sort of proto-encyclopedia from the Arab geographer Al-Idrisi) and William II was no different. Royal coins bore inscriptions in both Arabic and Greek, and were dated from the Hegira (Muhammad’s flight to Mecca). Ibn Jubayr, a Muslim traveler from Al-Andalus, reported that when he visited Palermo in 1184 that Christian women went about veiled, and that the locals spoke Arabic.
William II had been a suitor for the hand of Maria Porphyrogenita many years ago, and had perhaps at one time fancied himself the future ruler of Constantinople. That was not to be. He married Joan, the favorite sister of Richard the Lion-hearted of England, but their only son died in the cradle. Perhaps when Alexios the Cupbearer appeared at his court, complaining of Andronikos’ tyrannies, William saw a chance to seize that which he had long desired.
The Sicilians landed on Greek territory and captured Thessaloniki with embarassing ease. Andronikos’ regime was fraying at the edges. Andronikos sent his own generals: his heir Ioannes caesar, Alexios Branas, the eunuch Nikephoros, Andronikos Palaiologos, and Theodoros Choumnos. Of these, only Choumnos tried to come to the aid of Thessaloniki, and his forces were whipped and “fled without a backward glance”. Ioannes *caesar *busied himself with hunting, preferring warfare against woodland creatures who could not fight back with a sword or bow.
Joining the Sicilian army was Alexios the Cupbearer, “who was unworthy even to lead sheep”, prancing about as though he were already emperor and Constantinople itself were already won. With the Sicilian army marching on Constantinople, Andronikos was sinking deeper into vice and paranoia. Surrounded by self-serving sycophants, ambitious nobles, frantic populace, and the rapidly approaching Sicilian army, his ominous words were, “If it is ordained that Andronikos should be dragged down to the halls of Hades, they shall go first to prepare the way; only then shall Andronikos follow.”
Still obsessed with the issue of his succession, Andronikos turned to witchcraft. The corrupt courtier, Stephanos Hagiochristophorites, consulted the stars and the dreams and the omens, and asked, Who will rule after Emperor Andronikos? The response from the oracle was the name Isaakios, which Andronikos took to mean the troublemaking Isaakios of Cyprus.
Another courtier, Ioannes Apotyras, suggested that the culprit might be Isaakios Angelos. Andronikos responded with disbelief, saying that Isaakios Angelos was much too effeminate and foolish to accomplish such a feat, but the hotheaded Stephanos Hagiochristophorites decided at once to go and arrest Isaakios Angelos, just in case.
By September 1185, Isaakios Angelos was still a young man, but he had been married 3 and was the father of at least two young children, as well as a veteran of a failed rebellion against Andronikos I. His brother, Theodoros Angelos, had been blinded by Andronikos. He knew something was up when Hagiochristophorites and his cronies showed up at his house, demanding he come along quietly.
Effeminate or not, Isaakios Angelos had survived Andronikos’ reign of terror so far and wasn’t going to give up without a fight. He drew a sword, and even as Hagiochristophorites turned to flee, Isaakios brought it down and cleaved his skull in twain. He then fought off Hagiochristophorites’ homies (cutting the ear off one) and then rode through the city streets, holding aloft his bloody sword, proclaiming that he had killed Stephanos Hagiochristophorites. He took refuge in a church, joined by curious onlookers.
By the next morning, the mob outside the church had swelled into thousands. Isaakios Angelos denounced the emperor, and the citizenry agreed with him, being weary of Andronikos climbing in their windows and snatching their people up. Andronikos holed himself up in the palace along with his faithful supporters, and with Isaakios Angelos inciting them to riot, nothing could stop the mob. The citizens attacked the prisons, breaking the bolts and freeing the prisoners, and then the mob declared Isaakios Angelos their emperor.
Hearing this, Andronikos was so infuriated that he climbed upon a palace tower and fired his own bow upon the mob, but that obviously having little effect, he decided to flee. He cleverly disguised himself by wearing a pointed barbarian hat, and boarded a ship bound for Russia, taking with him his child-bride Agnes of France and his mistress Maraptike. He didn’t make it far before being apprehended and dragged back to be thrown into prison.
Isaakios Angelos was crowned emperor in triumph. His supporters, being a rampaging mob, entered the palace and stole everything that wasn’t nailed down, despoiled the treasury, and ransacked churches.
Andronikos was tortured brutally in prison. His hand was chopped off and an eye was gouged out, and he was left to linger in pain for several days before being paraded through the city streets, stoned and attacked by the populace. He was strung up between some columns and there he died.
His eldest son Manuel, despite being innocent of his father’s crimes, was arrested and blinded on the orders of Isaakios Angelos. Ioannes caesar, Manuel’s younger brother, was away ‘campaiging’ against the Sicilians during his father’s downfall. When word reached his army, his own soldiers seized and blinded him, and Ioannes *caesar *died wretchedly.
- The half-brother of Andronikos’ recent murder victim, Alexios II. Yes, they were half-brothers with the exact same name.
- The Arab ancestry came through his paternal grandmother, Elvira of Castile, who’s mother had been born a Muslim named Zaida.
- His first wife was in all probability a Tornikaina, of an illustrious family, as shown by evidence presented by genealogist Chuck Owens.
SOURCES:
Astarita, Tommasso. Between salt water and holy water: a history of Southern Italy, 2005.
Yay! The show is back from hiatus!
If I understand the end of this episode correctly, Isaakios Angelos had no designs on the throne until Andronikos I tried to eliminate him. Perversity indeed.
[squeal] It’s back!
Amazing, isn’t it? Niketas Choniates says that Isaakios was shocked when the mob nominated him as emperor. Isaakios Angelos was a fairly distant imperial relation – a great-grandson of Alexios I through a female line – and realistically he could’ve had no expectations of ever being emperor. He pounced on it like Snooki on willing dick as soon as the opportunity presented itself, though.
Even the batshit paranoid Andronikos I thought the idea of Isaakios Angelos deposing him was laughable. If Hagiochristophorites hadn’t jumped the gun – and if Hagiochristophorites hadn’t been so hated – then Isaakios Angelos would likely never have killed him and won popular support. Andronikos might’ve lasted a little longer, possibly even leaving his throne to one of his sons. Or at least surviving long enough to kill off Isaakios of Cyprus, which would’ve butterfly’d away Richard the Lion-heart’s sojourn in Cyprus. Who knows what would’ve happened…
The downfall of Andronikos I was the death knell for the Komnenoi dynasty, which had so successfully extinguished itself; now the Angeloi, their ‘poor relations’, saw their star ascend.
Isaakios Angelos was not yet thirty years old, bookish and effeminate according to his contemporaries, a widower with young children. He became emperor over a ransacked palace; a desperate mob of citizens; and a city that was threatened by the ever-encroaching forces of the Sicilian army, who had as their figurehead his foppish cousin, Alexios the Cupbearer, who’s only real accomplishment was being a real Komnenos, if that be an accomplishment.
Isaakios II dispatched the general Alexios Branas to deal with the Sicilians. Branas dealt the Italians two crushing defeats; Niketas claims that the stray dogs in the streets tore the dead and dying Italians limb from limb in retaliation for their invasion. Alexios the Cupbearer was captured and blinded, and of him we hear no more. The Italians withdrew across the sea.
Thrilled by these victories, Isaakios celebrated by becoming a gigantic douchenozzle. He boasted and bragged and strutted about “like a peacock”, Niketas tells us, and he disdained to wear the same clothing twice. Feeling a bit more secure on his bloody throne, Isaakios decided he needed an empress, and his choice fell on ten-year-old Margit, daughter of King Béla III of Hungary. The already overtapped Byzantine populace footed the bill for their lavish wedding.
Among those who objected to Isaakios jacking their shit to pay for his ridiculous wedding to his child-bride were the “barbarians” known as Vlakhs 1 and Bulgars who lived in the vicinity of Mt. Haimos. Amongst their number were a pack of brothers: Asen, Teodor, and Ivan, called Kaloyan (“handsome Ivan”). Their origins are much disputed. They are variously described as Vlakhs, as ‘Romans’ (whether this meaning Italians or *romaioi *is disputed), but Asen bore a Turkic name and my suspicion is that they were of mixed Vlakh-Kuman descent.
Asen and Teodor had approached Isaakios II, requesting placement in the Byzantine army. When this request was rejected, the brothers became furious, and Asen, “the more insolent and savage of the two”, was struck across the face by the *sebastokrator *Ioannes Angelos Doukas, the emperor’s uncle. The brothers returned home, vowing revenge.
While all of this was going on, Isaakios of Cyprus was still entrenched on his island, looting, raping, and cutting throats. When Isaakios II demanded that Isaakios of Cyprus bend the knee to him and acknowledge him as emperor and supreme overlord of practically everything, Isaakios of Cyprus gave him the finger. Deciding that tyrant needed to be dealt with once and for all, Isaakios II put together a fleet of ships and a crack squad of commandos to take him out.
Byzantine forces landed on Cyprus, only to be attacked by the ferocious pirate captain, Megareites (aka Margaritone), who captured their ships and kidnapped their soldiers to Sicily, where he turned them over to his master (and brother-in-law 2), William II. And so it was that Isaakios II’s master plan to humble Isaakios of Cyprus turned into more of a strategic retreat.
Back in Byzantine territory, the barbarian warlord brothers Asen and Teodor were busy stirring up their homies against the emperor. They built a church and filled it with Bulgar and Vlakh “demoniacs”, with their hair all crazy and their eyes “crossed and bloodshot”, chanting night and day for St. Demetrios to return to earth and lead them to freedom from their Greek overlords.
Now *that *is how you start a damn rebellion.
About this time, Isaakios II sent an embassy to Montferrat, requesting an alliance. The old marquis of Montferrat, William V, was an accomplished man of a large and accomplished family. His half-sister was the queen of King Louis VI of France; his wife was the granddaughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich IV and the sister of Konrad III of Germany. His eldest son, another William, had been the first husband of Queen Sibylla of Jerusalem before his early death in 1177. Another son was Renier, the ill-fated husband of Maria Porphyrogenita.
Two sons were left living of William V’s brood: Conrad and Bonafazio. Isaakios’ intention was to offer his sister Theodora in marriage to Bonafazio, but as Bonafazio had just already gotten married, he offered her to Conrad instead. If I had been Conrad, knowing what happened to my brother Renier, I would’ve politely declined, but Conrad accepted the offer and journeyed to Constantinople to marry Theodora.
With Asen and Teodor whipping the Vlakhs and Bulgars into a frenzy, Isaakios II sent his trusty general, Alexios Branas, to deal with them. A solar eclipse provided cover for the Greeks to sneak up on the barbarians and chase them across the Danube. Satisfied, Isaakios II looted Teodor’s house and stole an icon of St. Demetrios, symbolically recovering the saint to his side.
However, the barbarians were not done. They simply returned from across the Danube, joined by the Kumans, and hostilities continued.
Alexios Branas, the experienced general, chafed under Isaakios II’s command. Perhaps he had imperial ambitions of his own. Isaakios had won his throne with the sword; why could Branas not do the same? Konstantinos Stethatos, the most celebrated astrologer of his day, prophesied that Branas would enter Constantinople in triumph. Taking this as a good sign, Branas commandeered his army and turned on Isaakios II.
Barely two years into his reign, for the second time Isaakios Angelos faced an enemy at the gates.
- Ancestors of the modern-day Romanians.
- Megareites was married to William II’s illegitimate half-sister.
SOURCES:
Vásáry, Istvan. Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pre-Ottoman Balkans, 2005.
Snorri Sturluson’s Heimkringla
I’d just like to say that more history courses should acknowledge where wars start in similar fashion:
When Isaakios II demanded that Isaakios of Cyprus bend the knee to him and acknowledge him as emperor and supreme overlord of practically everything, Isaakios of Cyprus gave him the finger. (Emphasis mine.)