I think we need to use a hypercube-based chart to track who’s related to whom and who’s stomping on whom. Plus special lines to indicate “both at different points in time” and “both simultaneously.”
So in 1213 was celebrated that bizarre triple marriage, of Henry of Flanders to Boril’s stepdaughter Marya (really the half-Kuman daughter of Kaloyan), of Boril to Henry’s Courtenay niece 1, and of King András II of Hungary to another of Hendrik’s neices, Yolandette de Courtenay.
András II of Hungary was, as I have said before, the little brother of Margit, the widow of both Isaakios II and Bonifazio. He and Margit may have been virtual strangers to one another, however, as she had left Hungary in 1185, when she was about ten and András was nine, to become Isaakios II’s child-bride. Their oldest brother, Imre, had become king of Hungary in 1196. Imre and András were sort of like the Gallagher brothers of medieval Hungary. The Hungarian court just couldn’t go a day without András lobbing a goblet at Imre’s head, or Imre insulting the integrity of András’ wife’s vagina, or András invading the Hungarian puppet states of Croatia and Dalmatia. You know, regular sibling rivalry stuff.
Anyway, Imre died in 1204, and András immediately shouldered the immense burden of being king, which including driving his brother’s widow, Constanza, and his brother’s son and rightful heir, László, out of the country. László then obligingly died in 1205, and so András was free to concentrate on his favorite hobby: beating the crap out of Russians 2. Seriously, András invaded the Russian state of Halicz no less than 14 times during his reign. Meanwhile, András’ wife Gertrude von Meran 3 was strutting around court, pissing everyone off by being so irredeemably German. The Hungarian barons were so fed up with her and her posse of equally German brothers that they ambushed Gertrude and her brothers in the forest of Pilis in 1213. Gertrude was brutally murdered in front of her seven-year-old son, Béla 4. András, who had been out of the country beating up more – yes – Russians, sort of shrugged off his wife’s murder.
Can we all just dredge up a little sympathy here for poor Yolandette de Courtenay? Not only had she just been married to a guy she’d never seen before and packed off to a strange foreign kingdom (which was standard operating practice for medieval royalty), her new husband’s last wife had just been hacked into little pieces, and she was now stepmother to a pack of traumatized children. I wonder if she even slept for the first six months of that marriage.
The ink was barely dry on the marriage certificates before Boril was pushing his newly minted allies into an alliance against the Serbs. If I may remind you, Boril and his brother Strez had started epic amounts of shit with King Stefan of Serbia, and now they wanted to revenge themselves on Stefan’s face. As far as András was concerned, Serbs were sort of like Russians and that was reason enough to crush them like insects. But Hendrik’s involvement in this scene has baffled historians. Some assume that Boril led him into it (never mind that Boril couldn’t have successfully led cult members to a koolaid party). I have to wonder if Henrik’s reasoning had to do with the fact that King Stefan of Serbia was the ex-husband of Eudokia Angelina, youngest daughter of Alexios IV. Although Stefan had thrown Eudokia out of the castle in her underwear years ago, he had custody of their children. Perhaps Hendrik wanted to beat back Stefan before he got any bright ideas about putting one of his own sons on the throne of Constantinople as the “rightful heir” of Alexios IV.
When their combined forces invaded Serbian territory, Stefan sent his brother, the monk Sava, to negotiate. Sava met with Strez and tried to talk him out of being a bloodthirsty asswipe. Strez was like “LOL, NO.” That night, Strez awoke screaming that a young man sent by Sava had stabbed him in the belly with a sword. The Serbs declared that an angel of God had come down to smite Strez. Whether the killing blow was divine or mundane, it killed Strez all kinds of dead.
Strez’s allies, Boril, Hendrik, and András, decided to diplomatically back away from Serbia and return home in peace. Mikhael of Epiros saw an opportunity and jumped in to seize Strez’s lands in Macedonia before marching right up to Serbia’s doorstep. Now, Akropolites tells us that it was during this time that Mikhael asked his legitimate brother Theodoros Angelos to join him. Theodoros Angelos had served under Theodoros Laskaris in Nikaia for the last few years, but as Mikhael had no legitimate sons of his own, and his only illegitimate son was very young, he feared that if anything should happen to him that his hard-won little kingdom would fall apart. So Theodoros Angelos left Nikaia to join his brother in Epiros. Because we already have one major character named Theodoros (Laskaris), I’m going to call Theodoros Angelos by a nickname, Doros, from here on out.
By the end of 1213, Hendrik lost his only known child, his illegitimate daughter. She had been married to Alexei Slav, cousin of Boril and Strez, since about 1209, but if they had any children none were important enough to be mentioned in the chronicles. Alexei Slav, who Akropolites tells us “was never subordinate to anyone, nor did he join with anyone in good faith”, later remarried to a Petraliphaina who was a niece of Doros of Epiros’ wife Maria.
In Nikaia, Theodoros Laskaris was looking to marry again in 1214. He had lost his wife Anna Angelina and both their sons, leaving him with three daughters: Irene, Maria, and Eudokia. Laskaris wanted to forge an alliance with the Armenians, and accordingly he asked King Levon I of Armenia to send him one of his daughters. The only problem was that Levon had just sent his only daughter 5 Rita to marry Jean de Brienne, king of Jerusalem. However, Levon had an available niece named Filipa, and figuring a niece was basically the same thing as a daughter, sent her to Theodoros Laskaris.
Theodoros Laskaris and Filipa of Armenia had been married, shacked up, and produced a baby boy named Konstantinos before Theodoros found out that she was Levon’s niece and not his daughter. I assume it took Filipa at least a full year before she knew enough Greek to tell her husband who she was. Enraged and feeling that a dupe, Theodoros Laskaris divorced her and sent her back to her uncle in disgrace.
Mikhael and Doros were campaigning against the Serbs in Belgrade when Mikhael was murdered in the dark of night by a servant, Romaios. Doros accordingly took over Epiros and was considered its ruler by February 1215 (so Mikhael’s murder can be dated to winter 1214/15). Stefan of Serbia celebrated by getting remarried; his choice was Anna Dandolo, a Venetian, and granddaughter of the notorious doge Enrico Dandolo.
SOURCES:
Engel, Pal. The realm of St. Stephen: a history of medieval Hungary, 895-1526, 2005.
Notes:
- The name of Boril’s Courtenay wife is not recorded, so far as I know.
- I sort of wonder if András supported Boril in the first place because Boril’s cousin and rival Ivan Asen was allied with the Kievan Rus, and András wasn’t gonna stand for any Russians coming anywhere near his neighboring state of Bulgaria.
- Her sisters were St. Hedwig of Silesia and Agnes, the bigamous third wife of King Philippe II Auguste of France.
- Later King Béla IV, best known for defending Hungary during the Mongol invasion in 1241.
- A second daughter, Zabel, would be born in 1216 and eventually become queen of Armenia.
Oh, Christmas came early!
Wait…
- Yes, Christmas came early!
- Courtenay? There’s a town on Vancouver Island named that I wonder whether ther’s a connection…
- “Boril’s military strategy was like watching someone play chess using dice, a spare button, and that shoe thing from a Monopoly game, forgetting the rules halfway through, and flipping the chessboard in frustration…” Brilliant!
Now I would like to introduce you to two sets of princes, born of different dynasties and different cultures, but who’s lives would be bound together by fate and forces beyond their control.
The first set of princes were two brothers named Philippe and Robert de Courtenay. In 1215, Philippe was twenty years old and Robert only fourteen 1. By the standards of thirteenth century Western Europe, Philippe and Robert had won the jackpot, being born into the highest echelons of society. Their mother was Yolande of Flanders, the sister of Baldwin, Hendrik, and Eustace; their father was Pierre de Courtenay, a scion of the Capetian dynasty of France. Philippe and Robert grew up in a beautiful and luxurious world, surrounded by many sisters and watched over by their highborn mother. As babies, honey had been rubbed on their gums when they cried; as boys, a pedagogue tutored them in Latin and their father’s men-at-arms tutored them in weaponry. The France of their youth was a world devoted to Chretien de Troyes’ poems and cortoisie, a concept we now know as chivalry.
Philippe and Robert’s sisters had begun marrying and leaving home; first, their sisters Matilde, Marguerite, and Elisabeth all married French barons, but then two more sisters were sent to faraway kingdoms; one to Hungary and another to Bulgaria. Surely negotiations had already begun for a wife for Philippe, but they would in vain, for Philippe would never marry.
The second set of princes were another set of brothers, these named Ivan Asen II and Aleksandr. The blood of ancient Romans, Slavs, and nomadic Kumans mingled in their veins. Their father was Ivan Asen, the warlord of Bulgaria, but their childhood was not as bucolic as their French counterparts. Their mother, Elena, had been captured by the Byzantine emperor Isaakios II in 1188, but ransomed back. In 1196, their father was hacked to death after confronting Ivanko about his affair with Elena’s sister. Ivan Asen II and Aleksandr were raised as petty princelings at their uncle Kaloyan’s court, spending their boyhoods hawking and riding; what education they did have was mostly focused on memorizing prayers, Greek grammar, and church songs (a typical Byzantine education). In 1207, the brothers were forced to flee for their lives when their cousin Boril murdered Kaloyan.
Ivan Asen II, or “Junior”, and Aleksandr fled to the Kievan Rus. There they gathered an army and spent years fighting Boril, to no avail. By 1215, Ivan Asen II was about twenty-five, had fathered two illegitimate daughters by a concubine 2, and had spent much of his adult life on horseback, sleeping rough, and dodging assassin’s knives.
In July 1216, Hendrik of Flanders died suddenly. Chroniclers (including Ernoul and Manouskes) allude to or outright accuse his wife, Marija of Bulgaria, of having him poisoned. If this is true then Marija and her Kuman mother Anna were a rare mother-daughter pair of black widows. Some more modern authors have even suspected Hendrik’s old enemy Oberto di Biandrate of assassinating him. On his death Boril lost his best ally and Theodoros Laskaris his worst enemy; and the Frankokratia lost its leader and momentum.
Hendrik’s brother Eustace must’ve predeceased him, for he would’ve been the natural successor. Instead, the Latin barons had to turn to Europe and to Hendrik’s brother-in-law, Pierre de Courtenay. They offered him the crown of Constantinople, and as had so many others, he reached for the brass ring eagerly. And as like so many others before and after him, Pierre would lose his life in that undertaking.
Notes:
- They had another little brother, Henri, an infant, and two years later another brother, Baldwin, would be born in 1217.
- Marija (later wife of Manuel Angelos, brother of Doros and Mikhael of Epiros) and Belisava (later wife of King Vladislav of Serbia) were their names.
SOURCES:
Bouchard, Constance. Strong of body, brave and noble: chivalry and society in medieval France, 1998.
Sedlar, Jean. East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500, 1994.
Woman, get that book ready already. I can’t stand the wait for the next installment.
We’re on the edge of our seats!!!
Pierre de Courtenay, fancying himself an emperor and dreaming of establishing a dynasty on the fabled throne of Constantinople, mortgaged his lands and put himself in debt to the Venetians to raise an army of 5,000 and set out for Greece.
By 1216, Pierre was well into middle age, the father of a large brood of children, and a veteran of many battles. He had picked fights with his neighbors and kinsmen, and in 1209, he joined Simon de Montfort 1 in slaughtering the Cathar heretics across France. Pierre and his brother Robert had been at the seige of Lavaur in 1211, and watched Simon de Montfort throw Girauta de Laurac down a well and pile stones atop her, while the Cathars Girauta had protected were burned alive in a nearby meadow.
Pierre left his sons behind to safeguard his French property. Yolande and their daughters joined him on the march to Rome to gain the support of Pope Honorius III.
Honorius III was born Cencio Savelli, of Roman birth and German ancestry, and he had been elected pope earlier in the year, shortly after the death of Innocent III. He seems to have been a wily sort. In the contemporary song, Bulla fulminante, Honorius was likened to the god Proteus, who would change his shape in order to evade answering questions.
Honorius, like his predecessor, was obsessed with Crusading and was trying to drum up support for a Fifth Crusade to liberate the Holy Land. A story from the chronicle Burchardi et Cuonradi Urspergensium, claims that when he was a young priest, Honorius was approached by an elderly man who told him that the current pope, Clement III, was soon to die, and that Cardinal Giacinto would become pope (which he did, as Pope Celestine III, in 1191) and that “today Jerusalem is taken by the Saracens, and it will not be retaken until the time of your own pontificate.” As the first and second prophecy had come true, Honorius became convinced that the man who had spoken to him was St. Peter himself, and that the salvation of Jerusalem was at hand now that he was pope.
In the spring of 1217, Pierre de Courtenay and his army arrived in Rome. Honorius III was reluctant to meet with this warlike baron who called himself an emperor. He crowned Pierre emperor of Constantinople on April 9, 1217, but made sure to do so outside the city walls of Rome, lest Pierre later try to lay some claim to Rome itself by virtue of being crowned there. This being done, Pierre put Yolande (now pregnant with their son Baldwin) and their daughters on a ship and sent them to Constantinople by sea. The papal legate, Giovanni Colonna, then joined Pierre on the march to Durazzo. Before Pierre could claim his empire, he had to pay off his debt to Venice, and the Venetians wanted him to conquer Durazzo for them.
The seige of Durazzo failed miserably. Disheartened, Pierre and his army abandoned the city and made their way into the mountains of Epiros. Soon they were met by the Epirote ruler, Doros, and his army. Doros was all smiles as he greeted the newcomers. He told Giovanni Colonna of his respect for the pope, and wined and dined Pierre de Courtenay and his men. Footsore and homesick, Pierre and his soldiers were flattered and let their guard down. It was a fatal mistake.
As Pierre’s men and wagons wound their way along the snaky mountain paths, Doros rode at the head of the army with Pierre. They pulled a little ahead of the rest of the army, and then Doros sprung his ambush. His Epirotes poured down on top of Pierre and his retinue, cutting them off from the bulk of his army, which was now stretched out behind him and unable to rush to his rescue. The Epirotes easily overwhelmed and disarmed the Frenchmen. Pierre de Courtenay and Giovanni Colonna were carried off into Doros’ dungeons.
Meanwhile, Yolande and her daughters Eleanor, Marie, and Agnes arrived safe and sound in Constantinople, having endured nothing worse than a little seasickness. Word reached her that her husband was now a captive of Doros of Epiros, and soon enough, that he was probably dead. In shock and grieving, Yolande gave birth to her son, Baldwin. The ‘imperial family’ of Constantinople was a weeping widow, three young girls, and an infant boy.
Pope Honorius III lept into action – to save *his *representative, Giovanni Colonna, *not *Pierre de Courtenay. He threatened Doros with a crusade of retribution, and to appease him, Doros released Colonna unharmed. In a bizarre turn of events, Doros had so charmed Giovanni Colonna (and by extension, Honorius III) that when the doge of Venice threatened to attack Epiros and free Pierre de Courtenay 2 Honorius III forbade him to attack Doros, who was such a loyal son of the church!
And so Pierre de Courtenay shared the shadowy fate of his brother-in-law, Baldwin I, who had also disappeared into a dungeon and was never seen again. Within a year, everyone had given Pierre up for dead. Yolande was ruling as regent, but the Latin barons needed a new emperor and fast. They summoned Pierre and Yolande’s eldest son, Philippe, from faraway France.
When Philippe and his little brother Robert heard what had happened to their father, Philippe was like “Hell fucking no.” Showing good sense rare in this family, Philippe chose to stay behind and enjoy the good life in France rather than go and die in some stinking dungeon or get his face ripped off in battle with a Bulgar berserker. So sixteen-year-old Robert set out for for Constantinople to join his mother and become the new emperor. He meandered about through eastern Europe, visiting his sister Yolandette and her husband and new baby 3 at the royal court of Hungary.
With the death of Hendrik and the weakening of Constantinople, Boril was now in a bad position. His main ally was dead, and King András of Hungary was more interested in the Fifth Crusade than in helping out Boril. Doros of Epiros had killed Boril’s wife’s father, Pierre de Courtenay, and worse yet, were buddy-buddy with his old enemy, Stefan of Serbia. In 1218, the situation turned critical. The Bulgarians were tired of being ruled by the incompetent Boril, and when his cousin Ivan Asen II marched into Bulgaria with his Russian and Kuman allies, the city of Trnovo opened its gates to him. Ivan Asen II captured and blinded Boril, then crowned himself tsar of Bulgaria.
In winter 1218, King András II of Hungary was on his way home from crusading when he reached the border of Bulgaria. He had spent about a year in the Holy Land and Egypt, fighting Al-Adil (aka Safadin, the brother of the famous Saladin) and had bankrupted himself in the process. Apparently, he did not realize that Bulgaria was no longer ruled by his brother-in-law and ally, Boril, but rather by Boril’s aggressive young cousin Ivan Asen II. András was captured and held hostage by Ivan Asen II, and released only when he agreed to a marriage alliance. Anna Mária of Hungary, András’ daughter by his first wife Gertrude von Meran, was sent to Bulgaria to marry Ivan Asen II.
In Constantinople, Yolande and the Latin barons did what they could to hold the empire together. The three youngest Courtenay daughters did what they were brought to do, secure alliances through marriages. In 1217, Agnes de Courtenay married Geoffrey de Villehardouin 4, prince of Achaia. The Villehardouins were nominally subjects of the Latin empire, but in truth ruled as independent princes in grand style. Geoffrey himself was usually in trouble with the pope for one reason or another. Eleanor de Courtenay married a Crusader lord, Philippe de Montfort, ruler of Tyre (he was a nephew of her father’s old war buddy, Simon de Montfort). But in 1219, another alliance would be brokered to bring peace between the Latin Empire and its tenacious adversary, Nikaia.
Theodoros Laskaris wished to marry again. His first wife, Anna Angelina, was long dead, and Filipa of Armenia had been sent back to her homeland in disgrace. Regent-Empress Yolande had one daughter left, named Marie, and Theodoros Laskaris sought and obtained her hand in marriage 5. Marie de Courtenay became empress in Nikaia, and stepmother to Laskaris’ young half-Armenian son, Konstantinos, and his three daughters by Anna Angelina, who were now almost grown. Irene Laskarina, the eldest daughter, had recently married Andronikos Palailogos, a member of the highest Byzantine nobility and the chosen successor to Theodoros Laskaris. Irene herself was praised highly by Akropolites, who details her love of learning and her regal bearing.
Irene Laskarina was destined to be a young widow, as her husband Andronikos died suddenly. She soon remarried to Ioannes Vatatzes, who’s father had been the general Basileios Vatatzes. Like Irene, his mother was an Angelina. Aside from his ancestry, Ioannes Vatatzes had another notable trait: he was an epileptic.
Robert de Courtenay finally mosied his way to Constantinople in 1221. His mother, Yolande, had already died and all his sisters had married and moved on to rule beside their husbands. Only his four-year-old brother, Baldwin, was left in Constantinople. Robert began his feeble and lonely reign, and almost immediately he made a fatal mistake.
Robert fell in love.
Notes:
- A veteran of the Fourth Crusade, and father of his more famous namesake, Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester.
- Don’t misunderstand, the Venetians merely wanted a return on their investment.
- Jolán of Hungary, only child of Yolandette de Courtenay and King András II of Hungary, later to become queen of Aragon. *Her *daughter, Violante of Aragon, was in turn queen of Castile, completing a streak of four successive mother-daughter queens/empresses named Yolande in succession.
- A great-nephew of the chronicler of the same name.
- So in a bizarre twist of fate, Theodoros Laskaris, Boril, and András of Hungary were all brothers-in-law to one another
SOURCES:
Pegg, Mark. A most holy war: the Albigensian Crusade and the battle for Christendom, 2008.
I found this thread a couple of months ago when you updates and bookmarked it so I wouldn’t miss any updates. It’s awesome and you totally fucking rock for writing it.
P.S. I went and read the All My Capetians thread as well; thanks for that one too!
If you liked this thread and the Capetian one, Snowboarder Bo, check out my thread on Unfairly Obscure Medieval Villains. It got derailed partway through and out of spite I refused to put up the last villain, but I’m super proud of it anyway. My bio on Emperor Basil I of Byzantium may be one of the funniest things I’ve ever written 
As requested, here is a brief visual guide to who’s screwing whom, who’s screwing whom over, and who’s screwing whom under. It’s in PDF file and as concise as I can make it. It’s got most of the current major players in this soap op-erm, I mean saga.
PDF – Soap opera.
Notes:
Red squiggly line means “Hostile”.
Black arrow means “Murdered”.
Regular black line means “Married”.
Green line with circles means “Affair”.
Green hashed line means “Friends/Allies”.
On March 25, 1221, twenty-year-old Robert de Courtenay was crowned emperor of Constantinople in the Hagia Sophia, a position his elder brother Philippe had turned down when he learned that it ranked right beside ‘Spinal Tap drummer’ in the dangerous jobs index.
Robert was now emperor over a city that had been half-burnt and commander of an army that numbered no more than 2,000 men, the hardy veterans of his uncle Hendrik’s many campaigns. His subjects were largely alien to him in both religion (Orthodoxy) and language (Greek). He lived in a palace that had been looted of its treasures. Enemies surrounded him on all sides. And he met for the first time his four-year-old brother, Baldwin, who was motherless and fatherless.
Shortly after his arrival, Robert met a young woman. Although she is mentioned by several chroniclers (ex. William of Tyre Continuator and Baldwin d’Avesnes) none mention her name. For lack of anything better to call her, I’m going to refer to her as Mademoiselle de Neuville. Her mother had raised her in Constantinople; her father, Badouin de Neuville, had been a knight who had died fighting alongside Louis of Blois in the battle of Adrianople 1. Perhaps her mother was a Greek woman, or perhaps her mother was French and had followed Badouin de Neuville on Crusade. We do not know how Mademoiselle and Robert met one another. Did they glimpse one another in church, or did they meet in the Boukeleon palace? I suspect Mademoiselle had been a lady-in-waiting to Robert’s mother Yolande before her death. It seems likely. A young woman of gentle birth who was fluent in both French and Greek would’ve been a valuable translator and go-between.
However it happened, Robert formed a passionate attachment to Mademoiselle. We must remember that marrying for love, at least for noble and royal people, was an ideal and an impossibility. Or at least very rare. Peasants might marry whom they wished, but the marriages of nobles and royals were political decisions. Sometimes they were betrothed from the cradle. If you were very lucky, you might fall in love with the spouse chosen for you. More often, you would form a working partnership or ‘grow into’ each other, as one would a shoe. Sometimes, these marriages were disasters.
Mademoiselle’s father had been a knight and a brave man, but she was too far down the food chain to have any chance of marrying Robert. A gerfalcon had as much chance of mating a dove.
In Nikaia, Theodoros Laskaris was enjoying his middle age. His eldest daughter, Irene Laskarina, was married to Ioannes Vatatzes and pregnant. His second daughter, Maria, had recently married Béla, son and heir of King András II of Hungary 2. His third daughter, Eudokia, was unmarried and he had a eight-year-old son named Konstantinos by his Armenian wife. He was settling into married life with his newest wife, Marie de Courtenay, Emperor Robert’s sister. According to the chronicler Baldwin d’Avesnes, Marie “made a great deal over them bringing an end to hostilities” between Nikaia and the Frankokratia, and so Theodoros brokered a peace. He proposed that his daughter Eudokia should marry Robert de Courtenay.
Robert balked. He was not ready to give up his Mademoiselle just yet. As it happened, he didn’t have to balk for long. Theodoros Laskaris died in November 1221, and his son-in-law Ioannes Vatatzes immediately staged a coup d’etat. He set aside little Konstantinos Laskaris and proclaimed himself emperor. When Theodoros Laskaris’ brothers, Alexios and Isaakios, protested, Ioannes Vatatzes had them exiled from Nikaia. They followed Marie de Courtenay to her brother’s court in Constantinople.
In December 1221, Irene Laskarina, daughter of Theodoros Laskaris and empress of Ioannes Vatatzes, gave birth to a son. He was named Theodoros, after his grandfather.
While everyone was distracted squabbling over Nikaia and love affairs and cooing over babies, Doros of Epiros was slavering at the mouth with excitement. For years Doros had been chipping away at the kingdom of Thessaloniki. Queen-mother Margit and her son Demetrios knew the writing was on the wall. Hendrik of Flanders, who had long protected them, was now dead, and Robert de Courtenay too weak to come to their defense. It was decided that Demetrios would go in person to Italy and throw himself on the mercy of his half-brother, Guglielmo of Montferrat.
Doros of Epiros in the meantime made overtures to the young Bulgarian king, Ivan Asen II. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Like Doros, Ivan Asen II was a good military leader and had a grudge against the Franks. It doesn’t seem to have occured to either man that they had the same end goal (conquest of Constantinople) and that one of them would, inevitably, have to destroy the other to achieve that goal – or perhaps it did occur to them, but each imagined he could take the other when that day came. An alliance was cobbled together, sealed with the betrothal of Ivan Asen II’s illegitimate daughter Marija to Doros’ younger brother, Manuel. That done, Doros began to beseige Thessaloniki in 1223.
In Italy, Guglielmo of Montferrat met Demetrios and promised to help a brotha out. Although he had a comfortable life and family in Italy, and he had always refused to get involved in the Frankokratia, Guglielmo seems to have been moved by Demetrios’ plight. Thessaloniki was by now in such bad shape that the walls were mostly held together with paper-mache, spit, and hope. It was going to take a huge army to convince Doros and Ivan Asen II to mind their own damn business.
In Constantinople, Robert outfitted Alexios and Isaakios Laskaris with a small mercenary army, hoping that they would overthrow that upstart Ioannes Vatatzes and incidentally be grateful and beholden to him while they were at it. They mosied off to pick a fight with Vatatzes, and got the holy hell beaten out of them. Vatatzes captured the Laskaris brothers and had them both blinded. Robert de Courtenay, his military weaker than ever, was forced to sign some humiliating treaties handing over castles and land to Nikaia. And then Vatatzes threw another card on the table – Eudokia. Vatatzes wanted Robert to marry Eudokia, who was, after all, the sister of his own wife Irene.
In December 1224, after a long seige, the citizens of Thessaloniki surrendered to Doros and his Epirotes. Their king, Demetrios, had been gone in Italy for two years, Robert de Courtenay was too weak to help, and the Frankish lords in Athens and Thebes could not cross Epirote territory to help them. Doros rode in triumph into his new city. Afire with success, Doros decided to go for broke and crown himself emperor (keep in mind there are already two emperors – Robert and Ioannes Vatatzes – claiming basically the same stuff!). Konstantinos Mesopotamites, the head priest of Thessaloniki, refused to crown Doros grand poobah of spaghetti-os, much less emperor, but an ambitious young priest named Demetrios Chomatianos agreed to do it.
It took more than two years for Guglielmo of Montferrat to gather together an army impressive enough to scare the crap out of Doros. The Nikaian priest, Ioannes Apokaukos, wrote a letter to the Patriach Germanos II, reporting how Guglielmo’s navy “filled the ocean”, and once landed on dry land, covered the plain of Halmyros with “innumerable ships, horses, chariots, and armies.” The army was so large, and the men so cramped, that an outbreak of disease tore through the camp. Guglielmo of Montferrat himself died of dysentery in September 1225.
With the death of his brother, the fight went out of Demetrios, (former) king of Thessaloniki. He returned to Italy, sold his worthless title to the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich II, and died in obscurity a few years later.
Robert de Courtenay couldn’t bring himself to marry Eudokia Laskarina, regardless of what benefits it could bring his struggling empire. He married his Mademoiselle in secret, and moved her and her mother into the imperial bedchambers. Learning of this, a group of knights in Constantinople became enraged. Blaming the women for Robert’s refusal to ally with Nikaia, the knights stormed into the imperial chambers and captured Mademoiselle and her mother while Robert was away. They mutilated the women, cutting off their lips and noses and drowning Mademoiselle’s mother. Mademoiselle’s own fate is unknown. When Robert returned home to this sight, he was outraged. He boarded a ship and set sail for Italy, abandoning his own empire.
Robert went to Rome and poured out his woes to the current pope, Gregory IX. The pope persuaded him to return to Constantinople. Heartsick, Robert went to the court of his sister Agnes’ husband, Geoffrey de Villehardouin, where he died early in 1228. The barons of Constantinople appointed Narjot de Toucy 3 as the bailie, or regent, while they searched for a new emperor. Robert’s little brother was now Emperor Baldwin II on paper, but he was barely eleven years old. They needed a fighting emperor, not a young boy.
Their choice fell on Jean de Brienne, an adventurer of the first order. Born to a noble French family, Jean had arrived in the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1210 and married Queen Maria of Jerusalem the next day 4. She died in childbirth with their daughter, Isabella, a year later, and he ruled in his daughter’s name until 1220. He had remarried to an Armenian princess, Rita, and when her father died leaving no male heirs, Jean and Rita attempted to claim Armenian Cilicia in the name of their son, Hovhannes. Rita and Hovhannes died suddenly that summer and Jean had to abandon the expedition. His third wife was Berenguela, daughter of King Alfonso IX of Leon, by whom he already had several young children.
The deal offered to Jean de Brienne was as follows: he would serve as co-emperor for life and that his and Berenguela’s daughter, Maria, would marry young Baldwin. For Jean, the world could not offer him enough crowns. He accepted.
Ivan Asen II had put himself forward as an alternative guardian for young Baldwin II. He proposed that Baldwin II should marry his own daughter, Elena Asenina, and in return he would reconquer all the lands now held by his ally, Doros of Epiros, for the empire. The offer was splendid, but the Frankish barons knew it was just fancy talk for surrendering to Bulgaria. They crowned Jean de Brienne instead, and Ivan Asen II became a bitter enemy to them all.
Doros of Epiros was pissed as hell by Ivan Asen II’s hijinx. He saw now that Ivan Asen II would turn on him in a second if it meant getting a toe’s width closer to Constantinople. Now that he was emperor and in control of Nikaia, Doros had never felt more powerful. Constantinople was held by a tween brat and a foreigner and was ripe for the taking. But first, he needed to deal with those lying, backstabbing Bulgarians. Akropolites tells us that Doros was seeking his own destruction, and it was suicidal when Doros marched on the Bulgarian capital of Trnovo in April 1230. Ivan Asen II was equally angry at Doros’ impudence, and hung their broken treaty from his battle standard. The Bulgarians defeated the Epirote army and Doros was taken prisoner and blinded.
Once Doros was in Bulgarian captivity, his nephew Mikhael II 5, illegitimate son of Mikhael I, seized power in Epiros. Doros’ brother, Manuel, ruled in his place in Thessaloniki.
Notes:
- The same battle in which Baldwin of Flanders was captured by Kaloyan.
- Bizarrely, Maria and Béla’s stepmothers, Marie and Yolandette de Courtenay, were sisters.
- He was married to a daughter of Theodoros Vranas and Agnes of France.
- Only daughter of Queen Isabella of Jerusalem by her second marriage to Conrad of Montferrat (brother of Bonifazio).
- Born Konstantinos.
SOURCES:
Bredenkamp, François. The Byzantine Empire of Thessaloniki, 1224-1242, 1996
…aaaaand she keeps churning them out!
Konstantinos, the illegitimate son of Mikhael I 1, seized power in Epiros following the capture of his uncle Doros and changed his name to Mikhael II. This was in summer 1230, and he was about twenty years old. Mikhael II had been a little boy when his father was murdered in winter 1214/1215, and his mother fled with him to the Peloponesos immediately afterward, fearing his wicked uncle Doros might do what wicked uncles often did in royal medieval families, and have his nephew whacked. But now Doros was blinded and rotting in a Bulgarian dungeon, so Mikhael II seized his chance and his patrimony.
Mikhael II’s wife, Theodora Petraliphaina 2 was later venerated as a saint, and a monk named Job wrote a hagiography 3 about her, so we know something about the soap opera that was their marriage. According to Job, shortly after Mikhael II became lord of Epiros he visited her brothers’ castle and he “saw the beautiful young Theodora and became smitten with her.” All I can say is, I sure as fuck hope not, because Theodora was only about five years old. Anyway, against all laws of God and man Mikhael married this girl and she impressed everyone by being saintly and good except for her husband. Who the hell knew a pious five-year-old made for a boring wife? Sure as hell not Mikhael, and by the time Theodora was in her mid-teens he had taken up with a “maenad” with the unbelievable name of Gangrene 4. Mikhael threw the pregnant, sixteen-ish Theodora out of his castle and banished her.
Theodora went to live among the peasants and gave birth to their son, Nikephoros. She was picking greens in a field with her baby in her arms one day when a priest came upon her and, asking her name, learned of her story. He got some of the Epirote magnates involved and they broke into Mikhael’s bedchambers, seized Gangrene, and hanged her in revenge for what had been done to Theodora. Mikhael was scared shitless, took Theodora and Nikephoros back and, amazingly enough, he and Theodora had five more children. She became a nun when he died (Job neglects to mention if Theodora stangled the bastard with her own hands or not, but I’d like to think she did). Theodora’s sister, another Maria Petraliphaina, was of notably less saintly than her sister. In 1266, she conspired with her nephew Nikephoros to have her husband, Philippe Chinard, the governer of Corfu, murdered.
But back to 1230. Ioannes Vatatzes, now ruler of Nikaia, had dodged a bullet (er, crossbolt). If the Latin Empire of Constantinople had united with Ivan Asen II, Nikaia would surely have been bulldozed, right after Epiros was turned into a parking lot. But as it was, the Frankokratia was weaker than ever, Epiros was more or less out of the game, the kingdom of Thessaloniki was now nonexistent, leaving only Bulgaria. Wisely, Vatatzes wanted to make nice-nice with Ivan Asen II. They agreed to a marriage alliance, betrothing Vatatzes’s only son, Theodoros, to Ivan Asen II’s daughter, Elena 5. Ioannes Vatatzes and Ivan Asen II really only had one thing in common, but what a doozy it was: their utter butthurt at the existence of the Latin Empire of Constantinople.
In Constantinople, fourteen-year-old Baldwin II was joined by Jean de Brienne in 1231. After his brother Robert’s death, their sister Marie 6 briefly served as regent for Baldwin, but she died in autumn 1228. Now Jean de Brienne ruled as co-emperor and called all the shots. Jean de Brienne was about sixty, but looked older. Two chroniclers, Salimbene and Akropolites, both attest that he was very tall and powerfully built. He arrived with a small army to augment the Frankokratia’s exhausted soldiers, but they didn’t even have time to get over being seasick before the Latin barons were goading them into a fight with Ioannes Vatatzes. Jean de Brienne held back, unsure.
But Ioannes Vatatzes and Ivan Asen II began steamrolling over the Latin Empire, flattening or capturing every stronghold in their path, and the Latins in Constantinople began to sweat. It was obvious that the Vatatzes/Asenid alliance was coming right for them, and it had never looked more likely that the Latin Empire would fall. If you’re at all familiar with professional wrestling, Vatatzes and Ivan Asen II were a tag team like Stone Cold Steve Austin and Triple H, and the Latin Empire was about to get a folding chair to the face.
But this is where, in a wrestling match, the announcer would be screaming “WAIT! WAIT!” as a new champion emerges through a cloud of confetti and thrown panties. Geoffrey II de Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, sailed to the rescue, backed up by the Venetians. Geoffrey was a powerful prince of the Frankokratia, a great-nephew of the chronicler of the same name, and married to Baldwin II’s sister, Agnes. It was at his court that Robert died, heartbroken, in 1228. He maintained a mercenary army of knights from across Europe who came to his court seeking adventure or money, and he kept himself and them in grand style, clad in golden spurs, the Venetian chronicler Marco Sanudo tells us. He broke through the Nikaian naval line into Constantinople’s harbor, and his men reinforced the city’s defenses. Vatatzes and Ivan Asen II withdrew, mostly because they were side-eying each other. Don’t think they were defeated though, oh no. Ioannes Vatatzes sent a letter to the pope that same year, informing him of this:
Shortly after the seige was lifted, Baldwin II and Jean de Brienne realized Constantinople was totally broke. Baldwin decided to go to Europe (for the first time in his life) and go to all the royal courts and beg for spare change while Jean de Brienne stayed behind and tried not to die of old fartedness. In this he failed, for Jean de Brienne died in March 1237, followed a month later by his wife, Berenguela. Their daughter, Maria, the thirteen-year-old empress of Baldwin II, was left as the only ruling member of the imperial family in Constantinople (her three brothers were there, but were even younger than she).
Constantinople was saved only because Vatatzes and Ivan Asen II were too busy slap-fighting each other to turn on the Frankokratia. While he was beseiging one of Vatatzes’s fortresses in autumn 1237, Ivan Asen II received word that his wife, Anna Mária of Hungary, and their youngest son had both sickened and died suddenly. He took this as a sign of God’s displeasure and retreated back to Bulgaria. Then, something amazing happened, something unexpected.
Ivan Asen II fell in love. The young lady was Irene Komnene Angelina, daughter of his prisoner, enemy, and erstwhile ally, Doros of Epiros! She had been captured along with her father in 1230, and kept hostage at the Bulgarian court ever since. Upon returning to Trnovo, the newly widowed Ivan Asen II asked Irene to marry him. She told him she would only if he freed her father from prison. Much to the shock of pretty much everyone, Ivan Asen II promptly had old Doros dredged up from his cell and set free. True to her word, Irene married Ivan Asen II, and Akropolites tells us that Ivan “loved his wife Irene no less than Antony had loved Cleopatra.”
Ivan Asen II spent the last few years of his life fathering three children with Irene. He died in 1241, aged only about fifty. He was succeeded by his twelve-year-old son, Kaliman, by Anna Mária of Hungary. His widow, Irene, went to live with her brother Demetrios in Thessaloniki.
Doros of Epiros quickly rejoined the other members of his family, his sons Ioannes and Demetrios. Doros snuck into Thessaloniki, where his brother Manuel was ruling, in disguise, got in touch with his old friends, and they stormed Manuel’s home and chased him out of the city. Because he was blind, Doros couldn’t rule on his own anymore, so he set up his monkish elder son, Ioannes, as emperor in his place. Manuel went and whined to Ioannes Vatatzes, who gave him some money and soldiers to take back his lands, after Manuel swore an oath of loyalty to him. Doros countered and offered to split Thessaloniki if Manuel would abandon Vatatzes. Manuel pounced on the offer went back on his oath.
Vatatzes was filled with real ultimate rage, declared Manuel a lying liar who lies, and invaded Thessaloniki in revenge. He barely got there before learning that the Mongols had invaded the Selcuk sultanate and the empire of Trebizond and kicked their asses. Frightened by this new threat, Vatatzes had to abandon Thessaloniki, but not until he forced Doros’ son Ioannes to kiss his ass and tell him he liked it. Vatatzes then went home and allied with the Turks against the Mongols, but fortunately for Nikaia the Mongols never made it that far.
Doros remained the power behind the throne of Thessaloniki, however. His son Ioannes died in 1244, so dad stuck the next son in line, Demetrios, on the throne. Demetrios quickly dived headfirst into Caligula-esque debauchery. Akropolites tells us he once tried to escape through a window when his girlfriend’s husband returned unexpectedly, but fell and was so injured that he always limped and never again walked straight. In December 1246, Vatatzes decided to go back to Thessaloniki and kick the crap out of it again. Irene, Demetrios’ sister and Ivan Asen II’s widow, came out and got down on her hands and knees and wept, begging Vatatzes not to blind her brother. Vatatzes agreed to do so, and so Demetrios surrendered to him.
Notes:
- Thus, a bastard’s bastard.
- A niece of Maria Petraliphaina, the wife of Doros.
- A type of biography written about saintly women once they age into hags.
- Due to the way Greek surnames worked, I am forced to conclude this was her surname and that she was from a family called Gangra. Otherwise… holy crap.
- The same girl who Ivan Asen II tried to marry off to Baldwin II.
- Widow of Theodoros Laskaris.
SOURCES:
Miller, William. The Latins in the Levant, 1908.
Talbot, Alice-Mary. “A Saintly Empress: Saint Theodora of Arta”, Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation, 1996.
Epilogue
And so, gentlemen and gentlenerds, we have come to the epilogue of our grand saga. I am sad to see it end, but truth be told, there is not much left to say. As you may have noticed, the power and prestige of the Latin Empire was in rapid decline. It would some become a footnote in history; a strange and terrible and glorious footnote. A rara avis.
So that you do not wonder what became of the surviving players in this saga, I will quickly summarize it for you.
THE LATIN EMPIRE
Baldwin II, Latin emperor of Constantinople, spent his reign as a beggar king. In 1261, he lost his city to Mikhael Palaiologos. He escaped to France, but died in Naples in 1263.
Maria de Brienne, Latin empress of Constantinople, along with her son Philippe, ruled Constantinople in her husband’s absences. She died in 1275 in Italy. Her granddaughter, Catherine, was at once point betrothed to Emperor Mikhael IX, but married into the Capetian royal family of France instead.
Geoffrey II de Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, died in 1246. He died before he could see the ignoble end of the empire he had fought so hard to preserve. He and Agnes de Courtenay had no children, so his brother William, who was of French blood but raised a Greek and spoke Greek as his first language, succeeded him. William married Anna, a daughter of Mikhael II of Epiros.
NIKAIA
Ioannes Vatatzes, emperor of Nikaia ruled most of what had been the Byzantine empire before his death in 1254, having reduced the Latin Empire to Constantinople and a handful of suburbs around it. His first wife, Irene Laskarina, died in 1239, and he remarried to Constanza, the illegitimate daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich II by his Italian mistress, Bianca Lancia. His epilepsy crippled him in his final years.
Theodoros II Vatatzes Laskaris, emperor of Nikaia, son of Ioannes Vatatzes and Irene Laskarina, philosopher, theologian, and epileptic. He married Elena Asenina, daughter of Ivan Asen II, and they had five children. One daughter, Maria, married Nikephoros of Epiros, while two other daughters, Irene and Theodora, married Bulgarian princes. He died in 1258, leaving an eight-year-old son, Kaloioannes, who was soon deposed and blinded.
BYZANTINE EMPIRE
Mikhael VIII Palaiologos, emperor of Byzantium, captured Constantinople in 1261 and crowned himself emperor. He had been a former general of Ioannes Vatatzes. His mother, Theodora Palaiologina, was a granddaughter of Emperor Alexios III. He fell in love with Constanza, widow of Ioannes Vatatzes, but she refused to marry him and instead left to live at the court of her brother, King Manfredo of Sicily. Mikhael died in 1282 and was succeeded by his son, Andronikos. His daughter Eudokia married Ioannes II, emperor of Trebizond. Mikhael’s descendants would rule Constantinople until Konstantinos XI died fighting in the Ottoman seige of 1453.
EPIROS
Theodoros, lord of Epiros, “Doros” convinced his nephew Mikhael II to join him on one last attack on Ioannes Vatatzes in 1251. In 1252 Vatatzes captured him and sent him to prison and that was the last of him.
Mikhael II, lord of Epiros remained a thorn in the side of Emperor Mikhael VIII until his death in 1276. His daughter Helena married King Manfredo of Sicily (brother of Constanza who married Ioannes Vatatzes) but her husband was killed by Charles of Anjou in 1266. Helena tried to escape with her children but was captured. Her sons were blinded and imprisoned. Another daughter of Mikhael II, Anna, married William II de Villehardouin, prince of Achaia.
Mikhael II’s son and heir Ioannes was imprisoned and blinded on the orders of Mikhael VIII, and committed suicide. Another son, Nikephoros, inherited Epiros, but their line came to an end with Nikephoros’ son Thomas, who was murdered in 1318 by his nephew and wife, who then married each other. Bizarrely, that same nephew, Nicolas Orsini, was then murdered by his brother, Giovanni Orsini, who in turn was poisoned by his own wife!
TREBIZOND
Alexios and David Megaskomnenos, grandsons of Andronikos II, founded the dynasty of Trebizond. Although it was the most foreign and turbulent of the Byzantine states, the empire of Trebizond would be the last Byzantine holdout, falling to the Ottomans in 1461. The last emperor, David, was beheaded along with his three sons in 1463 after refusing to convert to Islam.
BULGARIA
Kaliman I, king of Bulgaria, son of Ivan Asen II and Anna Maria of Hungary, was twelve years old when he succeeded his father in 1241. He died a few years later until mysterious circumstances.
Mihail II Asen, king of Bulgaria, son of Ivan Asen II and Irene Komnene Angelina, succeeded his brother in 1246. He married Anna Rostislavna of Halicz, but he was murdered in 1257 by his cousin Kaliman II, son of Alexander (brother of Ivan Asen II). Kaliman II then forced his little Russian widow to marry him, but her father invaded Bulgaria and took her back. Bulgaria was subsequently torn apart by rival claimants to the throne.
SERBIA
Stefan Nemanjavic, king of Serbia, ex-husband of Eudokia Komnene (daughter of Alexios III) died in 1227. He had remarried to Anna Dandolo, granddaughter of the doge Enrico Dandolo, in 1216.
Stefan Radoslav, king of Serbia, Stefan’s son by Eudokia Komnene, married Anna, daughter of Doros of Epiros. Her influence over him made them both unpopular and they were deposed in 1233.
Stefan Vladislav, king of Serbia, brother to Radoslav, replaced him on his exile in 1233. He was married to Belisava, illegitimate daughter of Ivan Asen II. He was deposed in 1243 and replaced by his half-brother, Stefan Uroš.
Stefan Uroš, king of Serbia, Stefan’s son by Anna Dandolo, thusly great-grandson to Enrico Dandolo. He married Helena Angelina, granddaughter of Emperor Isaakios II and Margit of Hungary.
I’ll start the slow clap.
Any other interesting eras demanding to be heard?
Encore! Encore!
For interest’s sake, I’ve tallied up the blindings, murders, and suicides in this series. I’m not counting those that happened in the epilogue, nor those that happened before I started this series. Just what happened in the course of As The Komnenoi World Turns. As for murders, I didn’t count deaths in battle or single combat. I don’t think I’ve missed any, but if I did please let me know!
MURDERS
Total number: 18.
Murder victims:
Roupen of Armenia
Ivan Asen I, Teodor-Kalopeter, and Kaloyan
Baldwin of Flanders
Gertrude of Meran
Mikhael I of Epiros
Maria of Antioch
Alexios II
Ioannes Axoukh
Alexakos (Alexios IV)
Isaakios II (probably)
Andronikos I
Mourtzophlos
Manuel and Ioannes Komnenos, sons of Andronikos I
Strez
Hendrik of Flanders (maybe)
BLINDINGS
Total number: 26.
Roupen of Armenia
Aaron Isaakios
Alexios protosebastos
Ioannes and Manuel Komnenos Vatatzes
Andronikos Kontostephanos and his four sons
Basileios Kamateros
Theodoros and Konstantinos Angelos, brothers of Isaakios II
Alexios Angelos, cousin to Isaakios II
Alexios Komnenos, illegitimate son of Manuel I
Manuel and Ioannes Komnenos, sons of Andronikos I
Alexios Cupbearer
Andronikos Komnenos Bryennios
Isaakios II
Boril
Alexios and Isaakios Laskaris, brothers of Theodoros Laskaris
Doros of Epiros
Mourtzophlos
Alexios III
CRUCIFIXITIONS
Total number: 1.
Amadee Pofey
SUICIDE
Total number: 1.
Leon Sgouros