As The Komnenoi World Turns S1 E4
Last episode, Emperor Manuel died, leaving a power vacuum in Constantinople that his big bad cousin, Andronikos Komnenos, is eager to fill.
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 parts of Manuel and Ioannes will be played by the Hardy Boyz
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 kaisars, 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 commandeered the fleet.
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 the spring of 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.
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.
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:
1. I'm not sure what Niketas means by this but I'm creeped out.
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 parts of Manuel and Ioannes will be played by the Hardy Boyz
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 kaisars, 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 commandeered the fleet.
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 the spring of 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.
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.
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:
1. I'm not sure what Niketas means by this but I'm creeped out.