It'll be published next week, I think. In the meantime, I have a "proper" main TL update that I'll put up tonight or tomorrow!
Isaac's Empire 2.0
- Thread starter Basileus Giorgios
- Start date
It'll be published next week, I think. In the meantime, I have a "proper" main TL update that I'll put up tonight or tomorrow!
Chapter Twenty Two: An Age of Gold
Chapter Twenty Two: An Age of Gold
"And thus it came to pass, that the Lord God returned to the hands of the Romans all the wealth and glory of the world, after testing our faith in the fires of his wrath"
Isaac the Pamphylian, fourteenth century writer, World Chronicle
Isaac the Pamphylian, fourteenth century writer, World Chronicle
The Christmas period of 1281/82 was one of great celebrating in Constantinople, even as the city shivered under continuing snowfall. The Emperor Constantine X was hailed as an heroic figure, whose piety had moved the Virgin Mary to intercede on behalf of God’s chosen people[1] in their hour of need. The Emperor, who celebrated his forty sixth birthday over Christmas was for the first time able to decisively emerge from out of the shadow of powerful relatives, in this case his sister’s husband the Caesar Gregory Maleinos. Maleinos was a tough military man who was widely disliked by the populace of Constantinople for his perceived provincialism and impiety and following the lifting of the siege he finally pushed the Basileus too far in his brisk bullying, being sent from court in January with orders to harass the scattered remnants of the great Jušen army as they moved north into Bulgaria. Wisely, Maleinos made a dignified retreat, much to the disgust of his elder son Constantine.
In the East, meanwhile, Michael Photopoulos was busy carrying out the mirror image of Maleinos’ assignment: in this case pursuing those surviving Jušen who were fleeing the Aegean to the East. The exceptionally harsh winter was followed by an unusually early spring, and Photopoulos was able to make a speedy crossing of the plateau and Taurus into Cilicia to find a Jušen empire reeling from the loss of its great leader. An army that had been assembled to meet him promptly dissolved before Photopoulos’ considerably more motivated men when its Jušen commander, a cousin of the dead Ākǔttǎ, made the not irrational decision to flee to Mesopotamia where an increasingly violent contest to take control of the Khanate was beginning.
In that single summer of 1282, Photopoulos was able to make more gains than previous generals had in centuries. Antioch had been largely left to govern itself by the Jušen, and had shut its gates to one princeling who had turned up at its walls demanding bullion from the churches to buy a mercenary army. The princeling had placed the city under siege, prompting a call for help from the Antiochenes: a call Photopoulos was only too happy to answer. The Jušen force at the gates was briskly routed and the imperial banners raised above the city walls for the first time in fifty years. The good news did not end there. The Jušen governor of Syria, a Christian convert named David, commanded the largest surviving army in the Khanate’s western provinces and shortly after the fall of Antioch was able to defeat both that city’s former attacker and his Cilician counterpart, removing two potential rivals from play. Photopoulos, eager to consolidate his gains, sent an embassy offering David an alliance, which the warlord eagerly accepted. While David marched south to snuff out his Egyptian rival, Photopoulos’ men garrisoned the cities of Syria. Following a triumphant victory in early autumn at the Battle of Gaza, David returned north, and went so far as to marry his sister off to Photopoulos before crossing the Euphrates and marching into Mesopotamia. Photopoulos, meanwhile drew up reinforcements from Anatolia and headed south to Jerusalem and the great prize of Egypt, which he entered in November, just in time to hear the news of David’s defeat and murder. Much ostentatious mourning followed, with Photopoulos going so far as to suggest that David be named a saint and martyr. The cities of Egypt and Syria never returned to Jušen hands.[2]
In comparison with the grand achievements of Michael Photopoulos, Gregory Maleinos’ conquests seem paltry, but that is perhaps unfair to the Caesar, who had the misfortune to be overshadowed by a general who enjoyed an incredible run of good luck. After gathering troops in the shattered ruins of Thessalonica and pledging money out of his own private fortune to restore the city’s churches Maleinos headed north into a Bulgaria that was divided both by civil war within its own imperial family and the continuing presence of several thousand Kievan Jušen intent on salvaging a consolation prize after the Constantinopolitan disaster. It was a difficult situation, and one that Maleinos was determined to bring under control. This he did through three years of methodical campaigning, backing the younger (and anti-Jušen) claimant to the throne Constantine and then smoothly withdrawing support ostensibly on account of the un-Christian murder to which Constantine subjected his elder brother Stephen.[3] For a short while, Maleinos championed the rights of one of their sisters, Maria, who for a brief period in 1284 became Bulgaria’s first and only female monarch, but in the end opted to impose something very close to direct rule, with Maria being shipped back to Constantinople.[4] Though the “Tsarina” never in theory lost her title until her dying day some thirty years later there was little doubt about the real state of affairs. The Bulgarians themselves were certainly not fooled: the years 1288-92 were marked by a savage, Hungarian-backed, uprising that came close to undoing all Maleinos’ work and proved that the empire was not necessarily invincible on all fronts.[5] The surprising thing about the revolt, however, was not that it occurred but that it went on for so long: by the end of the decade tax revenues from the richest province of the Mediterranean[6] were coming full on-stream and Constantine X’s court found itself awash with gold.
The absorption of so much territory in such a short space of time in the 1280s proved to be something of a shock to the system. Constantine X himself, always ignored before, now found that he was being feted as a conquering hero despite never having ventured any further from the Great Palace than Selymbria in Thrace.[7] It is possible to see, almost immediately, the government taking on a distinctly different slant now that the Basileus was entering politics. Now that the need for tough pragmatists like Maleinos was in retreat, Constantine seems to have felt that it was time his Empire enjoyed the fruits of God’s peace and began to pump vast amounts of money into building projects, most notably a grand rebuilding of Thessalonica,[8] as well as patronage of the arts and increased funding for the military. As the state’s business expanded, and with it the amount of money in circulation[9], inflation began to gallop out of control, forcing the Emperor to issue a number of hectoring pieces of legislation to attempt to bring prices back into line. That Constantine himself was perhaps to blame for this was not really understood at the time by the common people, who rather than seeing the Emperor as the author of their misfortune instead saw him as a man deeply interested in the welfare of his subjects. It is perhaps fairest to say that both were true: Constantine was a deeply humane man and if his policies of the 1290s brought some difficulties it was only with the very best of intentions. In any case, the inflation of the decade seemed relatively mild, and enough goodwill remained attached to the Emperor for later writers to look back on his reign as a golden era.
The newly restored territories of the East quickly proved themselves to be a challenge. Egypt, notably, was plagued by revolts of both its Islamic and anti-Chalcedonian Christian populations.[10] Indeed, given Egypt’s vast wealth and centuries of independence from Constantinople it came as a shock to all that Rhomanian rule proved so durable. In part, this was due to Egypt’s own weakness, with an entire generation of fighting men destroyed first in the initial Jušen conquest of 1276 and then by the demands for soldiers demanded by the brief Jušen administration that followed. An anti-Roman revolt in 1284 was suppressed with relative ease, but a far more serious one broke out in 1295, backed by the Great Khan in Baghdad, the first Jušen warlord to establish anything like firm control.[11] This second revolt came very close to succeeding, and it was only the unexpected death of the Jušen Khan which plunged the empire back into civil war and ended any hopes the Egyptians had of reinforcements that saw it beaten back. Nonetheless, Egypt continued to fester: the question of how to rule over such a large block of potential rebels would be one that would remain unanswered for the remainder of Constantine’s reign.
Before concluding this look at the “golden age” of the later thirteenth century it is worth surveying the third unanswered question of the period: that of the Helot movement. The Helots, as may be recalled, had played a crucial role in undermining Roman defences against the Jušen attack of 1281, and this, together with the climate of peace and prosperity that followed might have been expected to seriously undermine the appeal of a movement that preached violently against material wealth.[12] Certainly in some ways, the Helots went into retreat and this was bemoaned by parts of the movement. But from a longer perspective, the peaceful 1280s allowed Helotism to have an internal conversation within itself about the direction of the movement and its beliefs. A literary Helot culture sprang up that took in elements of classical philosophy to sharpen the critique of the Church and Empire, and peace allowed the Helots to put down roots. The lack of appetite on the part of the Emperor Constantine to take the Helot threat seriously also helped them: the Emperor instead tried to conciliate them instead of attempting a root and branch dismantling of the movement that some, notably Gregory Maleinos, urged. The Helots remained quiet for the period, but they would return with a savage vengeance.
Had Constantine X died ten years earlier, in the summer of 1296, he could arguably have saved the Empire from sixty long years of suffering. In 1296, he had undisputed heirs, a united Imperial family, and a state that had recently emerged triumphant from the great Egyptian revolt. But Constantine lingered for another decade, a decade that would set the scene for the half century that would follow and the rise of a figure who would forever after haunt the imagination of all Rhomania.[13] The sad story of Constantine’s last decade will form the basis for the next chapter.
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[1] The idea that the Roman people were God’s elect and the Roman Empire was an imitation of heaven was a very important part of Byzantine self identity.
[2] It remains a source of bafflement within the IE universe as to whether Photopoulos was genuinely loyal to David the Jušen or merely taking advantage of a run of good luck: and similarly whether David was ridiculously naive to trust the Romans or planning on playing a long game. In any case, the point is a moot one: six centuries of “occupation” of “rightfully Roman” provinces was brought to an end in a few months.
[3] Stephen was, by all accounts, dipped into a barrel of honey and then fed to a bear.
[4] These battling Bulgars are the great-grandchildren of the Armenian John of Priene who found himself named Tsar back in 1183 (see Chapter Twelve), through his daughter Maria. Following the end of the War of the Margus, Maria’s son Ivan III was imposed as ruler ahead of his older cousins by his stepfather Stephen IV of Croatia, ruling until 1263.
[5] The energetic young King of Hungary, Álmos I, is wary of a strong Rhomania threatening the hegemony he has built up over the western Balkans through marriage alliance.
[6] To convey Egypt’s wealth it’s worth considering that the province on its own supplied something like a quarter of the budget of the sixteenth century Ottoman Empire IOTL.
[7] In this respect Constantine somewhat resembles Justinian the Great.
[8] Constantine’s activities in Thessalonica may very well have been intended to cover up those of his potentially threatening brother-in-law.
[9] Byzantine courtiers and civil servants (unlike, to some extent, the military) were always paid in gold coin.
[10] At this stage the Muslims had probably a very narrow majority over the Christians.
[11] Between December 1281 and the spring of 1292 the Jušen Khanate of Baghdad saw no less than seventeen claimants. A brief period of peace followed between 1292 and 1295 when one warlord seemed to topple all others, but following his murder another period of savage bloodletting broke out.
[12] See Chapter Twenty.
[13] That figure, whose name I’m sure plenty can guess, was born in 1294 in Venice.
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Indeed. And turmoil there will be, on a scale unseen since the third century.
Great Update BG.
That definitely sounds like him if you ask me. And if its, I hope to see it soon: that part of IE 1.0 was crazy awesome
Well thank you! I think I'd agree with you, the fourteenth century was my favourite part of the original TL to write: lots of good characters. Plenty of these will return here, and I'll be adding new ones on top of that.
Wonderful update
Thanks!
Another great update BG!
[13] That figure, whose name I’m sure plenty can guess, was born in 1294 in Venice.
I really hope that is who I think it is!
[13] That figure, whose name I’m sure plenty can guess, was born in 1294 in Venice.
I really hope that is who I think it is!
Thanks!
And you will just have to wait and see
Further thoughts, anyone? I tried to give this update more of a "social history" type tone: would readers enjoy more of this or do you prefer I stick to the political history of "great men" (and women) going forwards?
I also like both, so I'd say do whichever you feel captures the chapter's subject matter better, i.e. for especially significant emperors (Pope-Emperor Samuel would be a good example of this) use the "great man" style, and for updates that cover larger social dynamics (like the repercussions of wars, or religious schisms) you might go more towards the social end of the spectrum.
That seems a decent compromise, Ares, I'll try to work around that going forward, then.
New update here.
Chapter Twenty Three: The Hour Long Emperor
Chapter Twenty Three: The Hour Long Emperor
“He led his men o’er the snow
He led where only heroes go
Laskaris was his noble name
Let all of Faith recall his name”
Opening lines of the Laskariad, epic poem of the later fourteenth century
“He led his men o’er the snow
He led where only heroes go
Laskaris was his noble name
Let all of Faith recall his name”
Opening lines of the Laskariad, epic poem of the later fourteenth century
Constantine X Palaiologos, it was said, resembled his grandfather. Like George of Genoa he was of a short and stocky build, with dark eyes, gingerish hair, and a slightly squashed nose. In the autumn of 1296, it was becoming deeply clear he shared one further trait with his ancestor. Constantine, it seemed, was falling into madness.[1]
To begin with, the lapses were minor, apparently confined to the Emperor mistaking his nephew Demetrios Maleinos for the Regent the young man had been named for. As the last years of the thirteenth century slid by, however, the situation grew steadily worse. In the circumstances, it might have been expected that Constantine would be gradually eased out of the picture by the imperial family but in a singular shot of bad luck the man who everyone presumed would be Constantine’s heir, the Caesar Gregory Maleinos, passed away early in 1299. Gregory was the closest thing to a powerful unifying figure Constantinople had known since the death of the Regent Demetrios a generation previously, and his sudden removal from the picture set in motion a short, but nasty sequence of events.
Gregory left behind him two adult sons, Constantine and Demetrios, each of whom had a substantial dash of imperial blood through their mother, the Emperor’s sister Helene Palaiologina, and could thus reasonably hope to inherit power. Of the two, Constantine was by far the more impressive. A talented general who had inherited his father’s tough martial instincts in every way, Constantine Maleinos had served in the reconquering army of Michael Photopoulos in the East and then had been largely responsible for the final defeat of the Egyptian revolt in 1295. He was also, as we have seen, deeply dismayed by his father’s decision to retreat from the anger of the Basileus back in 1282, and saw the madness of his great-uncle as the perfect moment to prove that he could be his own man.
The exact motivations of the revolt of Constantine Maleinos that broke out in the summer of 1301 are lost to us. Certainly, Maleinos aimed at the purple, although whether he sought to be named Caesar as his father had been or whether he sought to depose his uncle the Emperor altogether is disputed by scholars.[2] Whatever Maleinos sought, he could be reasonably confident he would succeed: for he was a popular figure amongst the soldiery of the Eastern Tagmata and an experienced general. Launching his revolt from Egypt, he quickly gained the support of a cowed Patriarch of Jerusalem, and some sort of coronation ceremony may have taken place in the Holy City. Messengers were sent to the cities of Syria and Anatolia, as well as Constantinople itself, assuring the peoples of Maleinos’ goodwill and peaceful intentions. True to his word, when Maleinos found the gates of Emesa and Antioch closed to him, he left the cities in peace and passed them by in good order, to find a warmer welcome in Cilicia, where he intended to spend the winter.
None of this assuaged feeling in Constantinople one bit. Particularly vehement in their denunciation of the rebel were Maleinos’ brother Demetrios and his cousin Rōmanos Chryselios[3], both of whom cynically saw opposing a rebel as a way to advance the chances of themselves and their own sons to gain the purple in the absence of a direct heir of the Palaiologan dynasty.[4] Although Maleinos’ wife Margarita brought with her her own family, the Anemoi, few others amongst the nobles were willing to back the rebel cause. If he wanted to be Emperor, Constantine Maleinos would have to demonstrate his fitness for the position.
He would gain the chance to do this sooner than expected. Late in 1301, with the Cilician passes supposedly frozen shut, an army somehow scrambled through the frozen slopes led by a dashing young general named John Laskaris. Laskaris, a cousin of Maleinos’ wife Margarita, apparently sought to prove his loyalty to the Emperor and his efforts were enough to inspire the later epic poem, the Laskariad.[5] Epic poem or not, the attempt to nip Maleinos’ revolt in the bud was an utter failure for Laskaris, who saw his men melt away like the winter snows they had crossed rather than face the battle hardened Egyptian veterans. The would-be saviour of the Empire was treated with mild courtesy by Maleinos, who sent him back to Cappadocia to proclaim a continued message of goodwill. This done, the great rebel army rumbled onward onto the Anatolian plateau.
No serious resistance was met in Asia Minor. Unlike any would be Jušen conqueror, Constantine Maleinos made sure to thoroughly de-fang the remaining troops of the Tagmata in their Cappadocian barracks, and also to charm the previously resistant Dynatoi marcher-lords who now began to gravitate to the man they smelled as a winner. By Christmas 1302, Maleinos had advanced no further than the historic city of Claudiopolis[6], but unlike the rebel army defeated there two and a half centuries previously, Maleinos’ host showed no signs of defeat. Both of the general’s daughters had been promised to eligible Anatolian bachelors, and there were even signs of rapprochement with the court at Constantinople, with a few brave figures sending out exploratory feelers to conciliate, notably Nikēphoros Synadenos, the former ambassador to the Jušen who had now found himself a flourishing career as the Emperor’s favourite orator-philosopher.[7]
Though 1302 had seen Maleinos make gains, however, he had won few backers over to his side wholeheartedly, with many noble families, along with city trading guilds, monasteries, and bishops preferring to hedge their bets and avoid offending either side in the conflict. The effect this had was poisonous. Political society in Anatolia (which is of course to say only the richest fragment at the top of the pyramid) found itself badly split, and with division, violence followed. Despite Maleinos’ promises of conciliation and peace, Anatolia began to go up in smoke barely a generation after the Jušen raids had ended- and this time, no barbarian army was needed.
In spring 1303, Maleinos’ large army (contemporary sources present it as being hundreds of thousands strong, an obviously absurd figure that nonetheless suggests that Maleinos’ force was extraordinarily large) brushed aside a final defence of Constantinople by his cousin Rōmanos Chryselios and crossed the straits to make camp in the same spot ĀkǔttǎKhan had done twenty years previously. The time to decide was suddenly at hand. Some like Demetrios Maleinos favoured standing and fighting, and trusting in the walls of Constantinople to keep out his brother the rebel: but a more substantial party, led by Nikēphoros Synadenos and Patriarch Sergius IV, favoured peace. Early in the morning of the fifth of May 1303, the gates of the City swung open, and Maleinos, accompanied only by a handpicked guard of a few thousand soldiers, marched through. The “war party” seized the Emperor, and barricaded themselves inside Hagia Eirene[8] whilst the triumphant rebel proceeded to the Hippodrome, where, inside the Imperial box, he was crowned Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans as Constantine XI Maleinos.
Crowds soon gathered around the Hippodrome, as the urban mob poured into the great arena to see their new monarch. The air was quickly thick with shouts and acclamations: but the Constantine the crowd called for was not called Maleinos. Instead, the demands were for their “good Emperor”, their “father”, the “saviour of Romans”. Fearing the situation was becoming ugly, the Patriarch commanded that the mob return to their homes, and promised no harm would come to Constantine Palaiologos: but the peoples refused to be cowed. Led by a ragged monk, Andronikos of the Chora, the chants of “Father” became ever louder.
At this point, a sane man would have sent in the troops, or fled, but Maleinos had spent the past two years of his life chasing the throne, and would not be cowed by a rabble of peasants. In a rare slip of the mask of benevolence he had worn ever since leaving Egypt, he ordered his troops to cut down the mob as Belisarius had done nearly a millennium previously[9], but the small size of his escort told against him. In any case, the rabble had swords of their own. For, just outside the main entrance to the arena stood Maleinos’ former mentor the old general Michael Photopoulos mounted (so we are told) on a magnificent stallion fully armoured in bronze scale.[10] Alongside him were the Emperor’s own bodyguards, both the feeble but impressive Varangoi and the considerably more formidable Scythian Guard, a new regiment levied out of Christian Jušen deserters by Constantine X. Alone, Photopoulos would have stood little chance of overturning even Maleinos’ small force: but he had on his side the fury of the largest city of Christendom. That fury swarmed across the Hippodrome, tearing apart Maleinos’ veterans in a display of furious bloodlust before storming the imperial box. There, the “One Hour Emperor” and his backers were seized but not, on Photopoulos’ orders, harmed. Instead, they were brought before the general, unmoved from his horse, for the Emperor to decide their fate.
In truth, however, Constantine X was scarcely able to stand when his nephew was brought before him, let alone administer justice. Maleinos and his allies were thrown into hastily constructed cells within the imperial Palace while Photopoulos, perhaps the only man who could, dealt with the furious Tagmata by means of lavish payments. Justice, when it eventually came, was administered by yet another young man named for the long-dead Regent, this time Demetrios Chryselios, eldest son of the Rōmanos defeated in battle. Eager to prove himself as a stern but just man, the young Chryselios ordered that the rebels have their eyes put out and be confined to a life of monastic contemplation to save their souls, with Patriarch Sergius alone spared, to be tried, along with the Patriarch of Jerusalem, by a court of jurors summoned from the other three Patriarchates. The blindings, however, were administered so brutally that Constantine Maleinos died on the spot along with numerous others: only the septuagenarian Nikēphoros Synadenos lived any length of time after the revolt was put down. In his monastery, Synadenos would craft works that did little but function as a single long wail at his predicament.
For two years, the revolt of Constantine Maleinos had torn apart the Empire of the Romans, and the division sowed by the rebels would fester for a political generation. “Which Constantine did you fight for?” became a common refrain in markets, inns and barracks across the East, and blood continued to be spilled in a thousand petty brawls. Even amongst scholars, the division ran deep: was Maleinos a visionary hero who could have saved the Empire from its fate, or a selfish warlord who doomed it to the Antichrist?
For the next two years, the Chryseloi, despite the defeat and disgrace of Rōmanos, held sway, led by the four brothers Demetrios, Isaac, John and Andreas. The One Hour Emperor’s brother, despite his upstanding loyalty, was forced to keep a very low profile before his triumphant cousins, and never again would the House of Maleinos come so close to the purple. In the midst of it all sat the lost and lonely figure of Constantine X Palaiologos, who stubbornly refused the entreaties of his great nephews to consider the succession.
In December 1305, a minor scandal broke out at court, in which it was alleged that one of the Chryselios brothers, Isaac, had been flirting with pagan ideas.[11] Scurrilous or not, the rumour was enough to put the family thoroughly out of the good graces of their uncle the Emperor at just the wrong moment: for in February 1306, Constantine X died. For seventy years the Empire had been ruled by the house of Palaiologos, most of them in Constantine’s own reign. Dating from his crowning alongside his by-now barely remembered father Isaac III back in 1238, Constantine had ruled almost sixty eight years: the longest reigning Basileus in history.
More broadly, the age of the noble families was drawing to a close. Though it cannot have been apparent at the time, it would be the seventeenth century before a noble dynasty was again securely established on the throne. The age of the smaller men, the Mesoi,was now dawning, and an era ushered in by Isaac I Komnenos was slowly coming to an end. But for now, things would go on much as they ever had, as a new Emperor was crowned, a man many hoped would return the Empire to its apparent glories of just ten years before.
Their hopes would be dashed. Peace in Rhomania was already manifestly dying in the last years of Constantine X and with him gone, it was well and truly dead. Ahead lay fifty bitter years of anarchy.
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[1] See Chapter Eighteen.
[2] A lively pro-Maleinos and anti-Maleinos tradition sprung up especially in the 1330s, as writers debated whether the rebel could have saved the Empire, or doomed it to instability.
[3] The son of another of Constantine Palaiologos’ sisters.
[4] Though Constantine’s brother George fathered a daughter named Eirene, she is now a spinster fast approaching forty years old.
[5] The work focuses much on Laskaris as a figure of religious nobility and features many ahistorical and poetic elements: here, Maleinos is the leader of a Jurchen warband in league with Ākǔttǎ Khan, and Laskaris, despite his valiant failure, is able to sow the seeds for the salvation of the Empire.
[6] See Chapter Two.
[7] For Synadenos’ background, see Chapter Twenty. The callings of the philosopher and orator are not, of course, seen as mutually exclusive in Byzantine eyes.
[8] The second large, Justinianic church of Constantinople, known as “little St. Sophia”.
[9] Belisarius led the troops that crushed the Nika revolt on behalf of Justinian in January 532.
[10] To be precise, armoured in the style of a Klibanophoros- or, to be a little less precise, a cataphract.
[11] A grossly unfair charge: Isaac was a highly learned man studying Stoic philosophy.
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Deleted member 67076
Rhomania cannot into stability.
By the way, may we get a map of the empire and surrounding states?
By the way, may we get a map of the empire and surrounding states?
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Great update BG.
Constantine Maleinos is an intriguing figure: I wonder how his reign would have looked liked if he had succeeded. By the way, is he counted as Constantine XI in Byzantine numerals or is the "Hour Long Emperor" not acknowlegded as a Basileus?
I'm also having a bit of trouble determing who is Constantine X's heir. Though I guess many people in Constantinople have the same problem: I'm guessing we wouldn't have 50 years of anarchy coming if that wasn't the case.
Constantine Maleinos is an intriguing figure: I wonder how his reign would have looked liked if he had succeeded. By the way, is he counted as Constantine XI in Byzantine numerals or is the "Hour Long Emperor" not acknowlegded as a Basileus?
I'm also having a bit of trouble determing who is Constantine X's heir. Though I guess many people in Constantinople have the same problem: I'm guessing we wouldn't have 50 years of anarchy coming if that wasn't the case.