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The fall of Jordan of Aversa, despite what appeared to have been an unqualified success on the part of the Emperor John, left a bitter taste in the mouth. A minor defeat suffered at the hands of an imperial army led by John’s son and notional co-Emperor George early in 1157 in the Serbian wilds[1] was enough to convince the Emperor that he was suffering from divine misfavour, and that his ill-treatment of the Norman general was to blame. The Basileus urgently needed a way to make amends to God.

Fortunately for John, who was always a lucky man, it was not to be long before God provided an ideal opportunity. In the summer of 1158, a grand cavalcade wound its way north from Constantinople, with the Emperor at its head. At Singidunum, it met with an equally large parade, this time descending south from Hungary, led by the Emperor’s brother-in-law, Andrew II, King of Hungary. The occasion would be one of mutual celebration and a reaffirmation of the alliance between the two states. What better way, John reasoned[2], to obtain God’s forgiveness for his sins than to assure peace?

The imperial cavalcade, we are told[3], was an impressive sight. With him, the Emperor brought along the hapless figure of Theodosios Komnenos, displaying his half-brother quite prominently before the Hungarian King. A clear message was intended to be shown to Andrew- here was an Emperor entirely secured on his throne, with no rivals for power whatsoever. As if to prove the point, Anastasia Angelina chose an opportune moment to deliver the Emperor a healthy grandson by the name of Michael. Still more conveniently, Theodosios died in apparently peaceful circumstances on the last day of the Imperial court’s two month stay in Singidunum. It was, for John, a near-perfect summer. Andrew departed with his alliance more secure than ever, guaranteeing his loyalty to his Imperial relatives and the Uniate Church. Peace, it seemed, was assured- and with it, the safety of both John’s soul and treasury.

It was therefore unfortunate for all parties when the King of Hungary expired early the following year[4].

Andrew was succeeded by his son, Solomon III. The new monarch, named after his gloriously long reigned grandfather, had been earnmarked by John for a marital alliance when the time came, but the unexpected nature of Andrew’s death caught the Emperor unawares, and distinctly short of close female relatives of marital age. An attempt was made to press young Solomon into marriage with one Euphemia, a granddaughter of John’s disgraced and long-dead aunt Anna Komnena[5]. The proposal was rejected. Euphemia was, after all, an obscure woman in her mid thirties, quite unworthy of the Emperor’s nephew. In any case the point was soon proved to be moot, when, continuing a spectacular run of bad luck for the Hungarian royal house, Solomon himself succumbed in the autumn of 1159 to a wasting illness which had claimed his life by early the following year. He had reigned one year and one day.

Constitutional crisis now beckoned for the Magyar kingdom. The unmarried and childless Solomon left behind him two sisters (themselves both unmarried), Piroska and Sophia. Never before had the kingdom experienced such a situation, and confusion immediately reigned in Esztergom[6]. One party, made up primarily of powerful northern Hungarian nobles, the Előkelők, supported the younger sister Sophia, a woman of famous, dazzling beauty. Within a few days of Solomon’s death, she had been married to oneGéza of Hegyhátszentjakab[7], one of the most important and powerful of the Előkelők and the two had seized together the Hungarian throne.

All of this took several weeks to reach Constantinople and the ears of the Empress Theodora. A proud and ambitious woman[8], Theodora seems to have considered the marriages of her nieces in the absence of any surviving male family members in Hungary a matter for herself. The news, then, that Sophia had gone ahead and married without her permission raised the Empress to heights of indignation. Furious letters were despatched from the Bosphorus, insisting that the marriage of the new Hungarian Queen could not be considered legitimate without the permission of the Emperor and Empress.

For John Komnenos, all of this was deeply disrupting to his own plans, which seem to have involved a campaign in the East to rid the Empire of the thorn that was Smbat of Syunik. Suddenly and unexpectedly he found the situation on the northern frontier, settled satisfactorily less than eighteen months before, unravelling dangerously. King Géza had no intention of asking the permission of the distant “Greeks” for permission to hold the throne he considered to be rightfully his, and made the point forcefully by making a pointed tour, accompanied by a large army, of Hungary’s towns on her frontier with the Empire. More dangerously still, the rogue preacher John of Florence[9], a noted opponent of the clerical compromise of the Third Council of Nicaea was welcomed with open arms into Esztergom, and enthroned as bishop of the small town of Buda. Finally, Sophia’s sister Piroska was imprisoned as a threat to the Hungarian throne.

All was now set for war; and the arrival of a particularly aggressive Hungarian embassy in Constantinople at Easter did much to stir the urban mob into violence. The Emperor found himself being pushed further and further into a conflict he did not desire but seem powerless to halt. Still, as courtiers reasoned, a successful war against the Hungarians could bring substantial profit to the Emperor. His reputation in the army was still fairly low thanks to the fall of Jordan of Aversa five years earlier, and already the first waspish tracts of the wronged general were beginning to circulate amongst the educated circles in the capital. Ultimately, it was an act of God that made up the ever-pious Emperor’s mind, when, in May, Theodora was confirmed pregnant despite being in her mid-forties[10]. The child, an unexpectedly healthy son, was born in November, by which time John’s mind was made up- clearly, God smiled upon Theodora’s plans for Hungary and had, as far as the Emperor was concerned, even provided a candidate for the Hungarian throne[11]. The new baby was named Alexander by his delighted father- a name, it was trusted, would prophesise the success of the imperial armies. Baby Alexander was thus proclaimed King of the Magyars within a few weeks of his birth, with the imprisoned princess Piroska named as his regent. War was now inevitable and, over the winter, troops were brought back from Syria to rally at Bulgarian Sardica, a fortress of great symbolic significance to Imperial/Hungarian relations[12]. Géza’s impudence would soon be fiercely punished.

The imperial armies invaded Hungary in the spring of 1161, under the joint command of the Emperor John and his son George, a dashing figure much more popular than was his father. King Géza, for his part, fought relatively valiantly, seeing off an army led by the young Arab general Joseph of Emesa at the bloody Battle of the Five Basilicas[13]. Still, the end result was not in doubt. In August, John himself captured Esztergom after a siege of just three weeks, and entered the Hungarian capital in triumph, bringing with him the recently freed Piroska, named Regent of Hungary. Queen Sophia, meanwhile, was taken prisoner, and marched back south in chains. Géza’s army, undisciplined and exhausted, fell into an ambush at the hands of George Komnenos while rushing to attempt to relieve Esztergom, with the King killed in the fighting. It had been an astonishingly successful campaign[14], marked, at the end of it all, by the return of both Emperors, father and son, to Singidunum in November. There, just three years after ties of unbreaking alliance and friendship had been signed between the Empire and the Magyars, the Queen of Hungary was brought before her aunt, Empress of the Romans, and compelled to forfeit her claims to the imperial throne. Sophia was forced by Theodora into a life of monastic confinement in the barren wastes of Galatia- she is never heard of again.

War in Hungary had been a glowing triumph for the previously embattled Basileus, who now stood as tall as his predecessors in the House of Komnenos. Theodora, stood beside her husband, could reflect that few foreign-born Empresses had ever had as much power and influence as did she- and now, according to Jordan, her heart swelled with pride, having brought together her homeland and the Empire she ruled under one Imperial family[15]. The whole Imperial family had enjoyed a spectacularly successful two years.

It would be churlish to try to mark down John’s achievement in what is now popularly known as “The Ladies’ War”- though nemesis was certainly not too far away. He had fought with bravery and considerable skill, and, in doing so, had widened the Empire’s influence still further, into realms Imperial armies had not visited since before the rise of the Arabs. His appetite for conquest was now aroused fully and, within a few short years, his dominion would grow larger still. Hindsight is a wonderful thing- for John II Komnenos and his family certainly had no idea of the monumental folly that their Hungarian war had begun. Folly that would, in time, bring the long reign of the House of Komnenos tumbling down.



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[1] Just a small ambush, nothing serious. As related in Chapter Eight, the Serbs are largely pacified now.

[2] According to the embittered Jordan of Aversa, who may well be trying to paint John as a coward here.

[3] By writers more favourable than Jordan! Much is also made of the affectionate relationship between Andrew and his long-lost sister the Empress Theodora, a heart warming detail if true.

[4] Quite unexpectedly- Andrew’s not even fifty years old.

[5] And, therefore, also a granddaughter of the rebel Basil Palaiologos. See Chapter Seven.

[6] In OTL and TTL the capital of twelfth century Hungary.

[7] A pleasingly complicated name suggested by an Hungarian friend of mine!

[8] As can probably be seen from her behaviour in the last chapter!

[9] You’ll hear the name again- John of Florence is one of the most important martyrs for what will become the Parisian Orthodox Church.

[10] Rumours ever-circulated that the child of this pregnancy, Alexander, was not actually Theodora’s.

[11] I’ve ummed and ahhed about the plausibility of this- I know no case in imperial history where an imperial son, a Porphyrogenitos at that, was considered for placement on the throne of a foreign kingdom. In the end, I’m going to defend the idea on the basis of the fortuitous timing of Alexander’s birth, and of the Empress Theodora’s close attachment to her homeland.

[12] See Chapter Eight. Sardica was one of the most important fortresses to fall to the Hungarians during the 1129 invasion.

[13] This is modern Pécs, known in medieval times as “Five Cathedrals” or Quinque Basilicae. In the IE universe, the town was abandoned around the year 1200, so the reasoning for the name of this battle is quite mysterious to historians.

[14] Perhaps rather wankily so- the Hungarian war is the furthest north Byzantine armies have been operating since the time of Maurice. Still, Byzantium IOTL was certainly capable of these lightning fast campaigns against a divided enemy- John Tzimiskes in Bulgaria provides the best analogy. In any case, readers of the first IE will know that Hungary down, but far from out.

[15] Naturally, Jordan is savage about this- “the arrogant Empress ignorantly dirtied the domains divine Roman Empire with the filthy stains of her barbarian brothers”- a statement of quite astonishing hypocrisy from a Norman.