As The Komnenoi World Turns S2 E1
An all-new season of As The Komnenoi World Turns finds Andronikos Komnenos now in firm control of the city of Constantinople, as guardian and regent of the young emperor Alexios II. With the wily Andronikos now the de facto authority in the empire, the boy-emperor's reign is looking to be brief indeed...
An imperial cousin, Ioannes Komnenos Vatatzes 1, 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 2 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 Selcuk 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 3 banded together with the intention of taking him out. Word of their plotting got to Andronikos. Angelos and his sons 4 narrowly escaped Constantinople by fishing boat, while Kontostephanos, his four sons, and Basileios Kamateros were all captured and blinded.
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 5. The patriarch Theodosios, horrified by this incestuous union of double-Komnenoi, turned his back on Constantinople and retired to a little island called Terebinthos.
By now,the last two obstacles in Andronikos' 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, 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.
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. 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.
Andronikos I's 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 princess 8. 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, raping virgins, and stealing all the wealth he could lay hands on.
This threw Andronikos I into a full-blown panic attack. He believed in the AIMA prophecy just as much as Manuel I had; one cycle had been completed (Alexios I, Ioannes II, Manuel I, and Alexios II) and now it was time for a new cycle to begin. As the first Alpha of this new cycle, Andronikos I believed that he was destined to be succeeded by an Iota, and the rogue Isaakios of Cyprus fit the bill exactly. Believing that he'd somehow been duped, Andronikos arrested two of his most prominent allies and put them on trial: the wealthy and respected Konstantinos Makrodoukas, who was married to Isaakios of Cyprus' aunt, and Andronikos Doukas, "a lecher and a knave" and Isaakios of Cyprus' childhood friend.
On May 21, 1184, Andronikos I gathered round all the Byzantine court and had Makrodoukas and Doukas fetched from the dungeons. The courtier Stephanos Hagiochristophorites picked up a stone and lobbed it at Makrodoukas' head. He incited the other courtiers to do the same, declaring that anyone who didn't join him in stoning Makrodoukas and Doukas were traitors to the emperor. Andronikos I looked on approvingly. A heap of stones piled up, and seeing that Makrodoukas and Doukas were still breathing, some of Andronikos' attendants dragged them off to be impaled.
The people of Constantinople looked upon these impaled bodies and for the first time they knew themselves to be ruled by a tyrant.
Trying to assure himself that Isaakios of Cyprus was no threat, Andronikos I determined to manipulate the AIMA prophecy himself. He passed over his own eldest son, Manuel, in favor of the younger son, Ioannes 9. But fate had a way of overturning his carefully laid plans...
Footnotes:
1. The son of Theodoros Vatatzes and Eudokia Komnene (the sister of Emperor Manuel). He was the brother of Manuel's niece-lover, Theodora.
2. He had been one of the co-conspirators with Maria Porphyrogenita and Renier in their plot to overthrow Alexios protosebastos.
3. Basileios' brother Ioannes Kamateros had been another of Lapardas' and Maria Porphyrogenita's co-conspirators back in the day.
4. Including Isaakios and Alexios Angelos, who are going to be VERY important later on, as you will see.
5. Because clearly, what this world needed was the offspring of those collapsed Komnenoi bloodlines.
6. 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.
7. I can only suppose this Georgios was the brother of Andronikos' unnamed first wife, and thusly Manuel's uncle.
8. An English chronicler, Roger of Howden, claims that he murdered his first wife, but who knows.
9. The same one who had been conceived on his escape from prison years ago.
An imperial cousin, Ioannes Komnenos Vatatzes 1, 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 2 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 Selcuk 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 3 banded together with the intention of taking him out. Word of their plotting got to Andronikos. Angelos and his sons 4 narrowly escaped Constantinople by fishing boat, while Kontostephanos, his four sons, and Basileios Kamateros were all captured and blinded.
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 5. The patriarch Theodosios, horrified by this incestuous union of double-Komnenoi, turned his back on Constantinople and retired to a little island called Terebinthos.
By now,the last two obstacles in Andronikos' 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, 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.
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. 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.
Andronikos I's 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 princess 8. 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, raping virgins, and stealing all the wealth he could lay hands on.
This threw Andronikos I into a full-blown panic attack. He believed in the AIMA prophecy just as much as Manuel I had; one cycle had been completed (Alexios I, Ioannes II, Manuel I, and Alexios II) and now it was time for a new cycle to begin. As the first Alpha of this new cycle, Andronikos I believed that he was destined to be succeeded by an Iota, and the rogue Isaakios of Cyprus fit the bill exactly. Believing that he'd somehow been duped, Andronikos arrested two of his most prominent allies and put them on trial: the wealthy and respected Konstantinos Makrodoukas, who was married to Isaakios of Cyprus' aunt, and Andronikos Doukas, "a lecher and a knave" and Isaakios of Cyprus' childhood friend.
On May 21, 1184, Andronikos I gathered round all the Byzantine court and had Makrodoukas and Doukas fetched from the dungeons. The courtier Stephanos Hagiochristophorites picked up a stone and lobbed it at Makrodoukas' head. He incited the other courtiers to do the same, declaring that anyone who didn't join him in stoning Makrodoukas and Doukas were traitors to the emperor. Andronikos I looked on approvingly. A heap of stones piled up, and seeing that Makrodoukas and Doukas were still breathing, some of Andronikos' attendants dragged them off to be impaled.
The people of Constantinople looked upon these impaled bodies and for the first time they knew themselves to be ruled by a tyrant.
Trying to assure himself that Isaakios of Cyprus was no threat, Andronikos I determined to manipulate the AIMA prophecy himself. He passed over his own eldest son, Manuel, in favor of the younger son, Ioannes 9. But fate had a way of overturning his carefully laid plans...
Footnotes:
1. The son of Theodoros Vatatzes and Eudokia Komnene (the sister of Emperor Manuel). He was the brother of Manuel's niece-lover, Theodora.
2. He had been one of the co-conspirators with Maria Porphyrogenita and Renier in their plot to overthrow Alexios protosebastos.
3. Basileios' brother Ioannes Kamateros had been another of Lapardas' and Maria Porphyrogenita's co-conspirators back in the day.
4. Including Isaakios and Alexios Angelos, who are going to be VERY important later on, as you will see.
5. Because clearly, what this world needed was the offspring of those collapsed Komnenoi bloodlines.
6. 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.
7. I can only suppose this Georgios was the brother of Andronikos' unnamed first wife, and thusly Manuel's uncle.
8. An English chronicler, Roger of Howden, claims that he murdered his first wife, but who knows.
9. The same one who had been conceived on his escape from prison years ago.