Eparkhos
Banned
Alright, let's get it started.
i. The Madness of Constantine VIII
The reign of Basil II is universally considered to be one of the greatest periods of Eastern Roman history. Across all fronts, the enemies of the immortal empire were driven back with great losses; the Romans penetrated deep into Syria in a way they hadn’t since the Arab conquest, vast swathes of Armenia were forced to pay tribute to Constantinople, and, of course, Bulgaria was reduced after four hundred years of defiance. The Turko-Slavic state which had so longer hung over Constantinople like a sword of Damocles was at long last crushed and subjugated after nearly thirty years of constant warfare. Despite these martial successes, the common people of Anatolia and much of the Balkans prospered, shielded from the depredations of invaders and rapacious magnates alike by the tireless efforts of the basileus. Truly, it was a golden age.
Of course, all golden ages must come to an end. Basil, fearful of internal disorder after the coups and civil wars that had marred the first years of his long reign, hadn’t married, and he had forbidden the daughters of his brother from marrying either. As such, upon his death, the throne passed to the last male member of the House of Macedon, Constantine VIII.
The brothers had been co-emperors for a grand total of sixty-two years, ascending to the throne at the age of five and three, respectively. While Basil had dodged the typical debauchery of child rulers, veering the opposite direction into asceticism and personal isolation, Constantine had plunged directly into this rut the moment he hit puberty. He spent every waking moment in one of his three favorite activities; hunting, feasting and wenching. Supposedly, his actual grasp of statecraft and military matters were so pathetic that Basil refused to let him command anything other than a hunting party after a brief excursion in Anatolia in 989, and he was forbidden to enter the administrative buildings that surrounded the palace; evidently, the latter precaution was unnecessary. By the time he became sole ruler in December 1025, he was morbidly obese and gauty, likely had diabetes, and could walk only with the assistance of multiple attendants and helpers. Worse than that, his years of debauchery and degeneracy had turned the once well-spoken and generous young man into a paranoid and viscous tyrant. Constantine would be described by later historians as “...the cruelest man to have ever lived…”, “...devoid of even the most feeble redeeming characteristics and an idiot before God…”, and “...an infinitely better whoremonger than a ruler.” While these epithets have almost certainly been inflated on order of his successors, they do much to reveal Constantine’s true nature. He was a petty and fickle man, famously having a servant blinded because he was late in bringing him a bowl of custard, and was incredibly paranoid and cruel. The beginning of his reign coincided with the beginning of a reign of terror that would paralyze the City of the World’s Desire for months on end.
Constantine was possessed of a unique and bizarre mixture of paranoia and stupidity. While he feared assassins in every shadow, he allowed--nay, he encouraged--the provincial nobility to increase their power exponentially. Within weeks of the beginning of his sole reign, he had repealed all of his brother’s policies designed to protect the common people from the magnates. In hopes of placating the many men who he was sure wanted to kill him, he would grant any request put before him no matter how depraved or stupid. He fell at once under the influence of the court eunuchs, and they manipulated him into imprisoning, blinding or mutilating dozens of loyal attendants in the first weeks of his reign, among them one Constantine Bourtzes, who had briefly been Basil’s secretary years before. Despite his fear of the aristocracy, he did not attempt to rouse the army to his banner in any manner whatsoever, considering the nearly suicidal path of imprisoning several popular generals before deciding that this would be a bridge too far. Nonetheless, his tyranny extended across the capital in a way unseen for decades, creating far more enemies than he could ever purge and in many cases even obliviously empowering those who despised him while brutalizing them who supported him.
Into this setting enter one Bardas Phokas the Youngest. Bardas was the scion of the Phokai, an old aristocratic family that had reached its apogee fifty years before with the ascension of Nikephoros II as regent for and eventual co-emperor with Basil II. Nikephoros had been overthrown and murdered by his nephew after six years on the throne, and the family’s fortunes had fallen quickly afterwards. In 971, Bardas’ grandfather of the same name revolted against Basil, swiftly being defeated and forced to flee into exile. He had returned more than fifteen years and was similarly defeated, falling in battle against the basileus during the revolt of Bardas Skleros. For this, the Phokas had been essentially blackballed from the highest halls of power, Basil even going so far as to ban any member from owning more than two hundred acres of land in 996. Things had seemed to be on the mend when Nikephoros Phokas Barytrachelos, the governor of Kappadokia, had revolted in 1022, ultimately being murdered by one of his co-conspirators before he had even come within sight of the Marmara. As punishment for having revolted thrice, the Phokai were permanently smashed; they were forbidden to own any property whatsoever, and most of the family’s scions changed their names to avoid the scorn of their peers. Bardas was the only son of Nikephoros, and, having concluded that there was no way in hell anyone would ever forget his uncle’s deeds, hadn’t even bothered to do so, leaving him as the last male member of the house, and the last altogether bar an elderly aunt living in Trebizond.
Bardas’ genial nature has almost certainly been exaggerated by later historians, but he was doubtless a fairly agreeable man. He was of average size and build, had dark hair and dark eyes but fairly light skin, likely due to an Armenian or Georgian mother. He was well-spoken and fairly well-educated, but possessed much of the air of a soldier thanks to years as an officer in the eastern armies prior to his uncle’s coup, and as a common footman in Bulgaria afterwards. In 1025, he departed--some say abandoned--his post along the Danube and went to the capital, likely seeking to make a fortune independent of his fairly sordid past. His arrival in the city did not go unnoticed, of course, and he was arrested within days of entering the city. After spending several weeks in a cell, he was released by an administrative error[1] and fled into the underbelly of the capital. He was furious at this false arrest and the rough treatment which he had been given despite years of loyal service and constant insults, and despaired of ever achieving a normal life. As he sat in a cheap tavern in the Pempton, bad wine churning in his stomach, he decided his only road forward one lay in going for broke and seizing the throne.
Of course, this was easier said than done, and he needed allies if his plans would bring him anything other than death or blinding. Fortunately, potential co-conspirators were in plentiful supply in a city full of restive aristocrats and scheming eunuchs, and within a few weeks Bardas was, with his natural gift for words, able to win over several dozen men to his cause. Chief among these conspirators were the Bourtzes brothers, Mikhael, Samouel and Theognostos, who were the brothers of Constantine Bourtzes and were understandably more than a little miffed that their brother had his eyes gouged out and hands cut off after decades of loyal service, and were more than a little afraid that the same might happen to them. Mikhael and Samouel were both senior bureaucrats and were well-positioned to siphon off money to support the plot, while Theognostos was an experienced commander and, moreover, had a retinue of several dozen veterans that would be crucial to any coup. Bardas was able to earn the support of several members of the Imperial bodyguard by a number of means, chief among them the hetaireia Isaakios Komnenos, who was resentful towards the emperor after his uncle, Nikephoros, and his family had been arrested and blinded on false charges in June 1026[2]. During that summer, he became drinking buddies with another member of the palace guard, Nikephoros Bryennios[3], who was charged with securing one of the complex’s gates, and managed to convince him of the validity of his claim to the throne, as well as befriending a bureaucrat named Constantine Monomachos who had fallen upon hard times and was quite upset with the sitting basileus. He also convinced his cousin, Nikephoros Botaneiates, to support his coup. Finally, he had managed to win over the ambitious doux of Thessalonica, Bulgaria and Serbia, Constantine, who promised to strike for Bardas if he succeeded in overthrowing Constantine VIII.
The plan was as follows: The fighters would be smuggled into a large, vacant cellar of the palace by Komnenos and Bryennios, which Monomachos and the Bourtzes brothers would have stocked with enough supplies to keep them hidden. On the night of the coup, Botaneiates would incite a riot in the slums, and the conspirators would start setting fires across the city. While the palace guard was weakened dealing with these, Bardas and his men would rush the Imperial bedchamber and kill Constantine, then rush across the Augustaion to the Hagia Sophia to be crowned. Theodora, the younger of the emperor’s daughters at “only” forty-four, would be brought from the women’s quarters and forced to marry Bardas to secure his legitimacy. The riot would then be quelled and the fires drenched, leaving Bardas as the savior of the city and (semi) legitimate emperor.
By September, there were eight chief conspirators and roughly two hundred potential fighters, mostly Komnenoi or Bourtzoi retainers with a handful of mutinous guards and soldiers in the mix, all of whom were only informed of vague details at best. However, someone must have leaked, for on the night of 16 September 1026, Constantine dispatched a dozen Varangians to arrest Bardas in the inn in which he resided. Bardas wasn’t a complete fool, however, and in addition to residing there under a false name, he had also pried up several floorboards to act as an alarm. When one of the Varangians creeping up the hallway stepped on a loose board, Bardas shot up and flew out the window before the guards had even reached the barricaded door. He stole a horse from the front of the inn and galloped down the Mese to warn his co-conspirators.
Half an hour later, Theognostos Bourtzes was woken by Bardas hammering on his door, breathlessly telling him that the coup had been found out and they had to go, NOW! The Bourtzes retainers were hurriedly woken and mustered, while Bardas rode down the street to the Komnenoi capital villa to inform a bewildered Ioannes Komnenos that his brother was in on a plot against the emperor, and that if he didn’t rally his retainers immediately they’d all be sharing a cell in the bowels of the palace. Within ten minutes, eighty armed men were making for the palace in a dead sprint. They were spotted by sentries in the Tower of Belisarius, but were mistaken for priests and no alarm was raised. Bardas reached the palace at the same time the Varangians returned to inform Constantine of their failure, but the cool-headed usurper managed to steer his column away from them and to Bryennios’ side gate. The guard was confused to find them there without forewarning, but realized they had passed the point of no return long ago and let them in. They rushed down the hallway towards the Imperial bedchambers only to be met by a panicked Komnenos who told Bardas that the cry had been raised and there were now several hundred Norsemen between them and the bedchambers, and several thousand more were assembling nearby. Thinking quickly, Bardars ordered Theognostos to continue forward and distracted the Varangains with as much noise as possible, while he, the Komnenoi brothers, Bryennios and a famed soldier named Stephanos crept around to the back. Bardas and his small force leapt out of a nearby window and sprinted through the gardens around the palace to the bedchambers. Silently, they scaled the wall, and at his signal Bardas and Isaakios Komnenos smashed open a window and rushed in. The three guards present were stunned by their sudden appearance and before they could react two were dead, another knocked out and the door barred with a sword. Constantine was shouting incoherently at the assassins and thrashing about his bed, and without a second though Bardas stabbed him in the chest. The emperor was so fat that the dagger failed to do any damage, and he shouted his last words: “Oh, how cruel!” Stephanos then tried to lop off his head; his neck was so swollen it took two blows to sever it.
With the Varangians now battering down the door, Bardas shouted that he was emperor now and pressed Constantine’s head against a gash that had been cut through one of the doors. With Constantine now definitely dead, the Varangains paused their assault, no doubt mulling over what to do next. Bardas shouted an offer of a 150% pay raise, and at this the Varangians hailed him as emperor, raising him on their shield in the garden after escorting him thence. Bardas sent men to fetch Theodora from the women’s quarters while he and his makeshift army raced to the Hagia Sophia. The Patriarch, Alexios the Stoudite, was asleep in his neighboring apartments when he was woken by Bardas’ men, and initially refused to crown Bardas while the blood of the usurper’s predecessor was smattered across his tunic. A promise of several hundred pounds of gold to the Patriarchate and carte blanche for Alexios’ blossoming ecclesiastical reforms managed to convince him. With the crown recently taken from a dead man upon his head, Bardas was crowned as basileus shortly before midnight, and a few minutes later the basileus married a slightly upset Theodora, legitimizing him as best he could.
As dawn rose on 17 September, the citizens of Constantinople were informed that Constantine was dead and the House of Macedon effectively extinguished. The expected riots were strangled before they could break out by the troops scattered across the city to deal with the disturbances of the night before. The fires which had been set the night before were being slowly quenched. Bardas I Phokas was now the Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans, in name at the very least.
Of course, Constantinople was not the empire itself, and there were many loyalists to the House of Makedon in the provinces….
[1] This is the Point of Divergence; everything hereafter is alternate history
[2] This ATL, caused by Constantine’s general pettiness after some servant or subordinate messes something up right before Komnenos is dragged in
[3] Father of the OTL general
i. The Madness of Constantine VIII
The reign of Basil II is universally considered to be one of the greatest periods of Eastern Roman history. Across all fronts, the enemies of the immortal empire were driven back with great losses; the Romans penetrated deep into Syria in a way they hadn’t since the Arab conquest, vast swathes of Armenia were forced to pay tribute to Constantinople, and, of course, Bulgaria was reduced after four hundred years of defiance. The Turko-Slavic state which had so longer hung over Constantinople like a sword of Damocles was at long last crushed and subjugated after nearly thirty years of constant warfare. Despite these martial successes, the common people of Anatolia and much of the Balkans prospered, shielded from the depredations of invaders and rapacious magnates alike by the tireless efforts of the basileus. Truly, it was a golden age.
Of course, all golden ages must come to an end. Basil, fearful of internal disorder after the coups and civil wars that had marred the first years of his long reign, hadn’t married, and he had forbidden the daughters of his brother from marrying either. As such, upon his death, the throne passed to the last male member of the House of Macedon, Constantine VIII.
The brothers had been co-emperors for a grand total of sixty-two years, ascending to the throne at the age of five and three, respectively. While Basil had dodged the typical debauchery of child rulers, veering the opposite direction into asceticism and personal isolation, Constantine had plunged directly into this rut the moment he hit puberty. He spent every waking moment in one of his three favorite activities; hunting, feasting and wenching. Supposedly, his actual grasp of statecraft and military matters were so pathetic that Basil refused to let him command anything other than a hunting party after a brief excursion in Anatolia in 989, and he was forbidden to enter the administrative buildings that surrounded the palace; evidently, the latter precaution was unnecessary. By the time he became sole ruler in December 1025, he was morbidly obese and gauty, likely had diabetes, and could walk only with the assistance of multiple attendants and helpers. Worse than that, his years of debauchery and degeneracy had turned the once well-spoken and generous young man into a paranoid and viscous tyrant. Constantine would be described by later historians as “...the cruelest man to have ever lived…”, “...devoid of even the most feeble redeeming characteristics and an idiot before God…”, and “...an infinitely better whoremonger than a ruler.” While these epithets have almost certainly been inflated on order of his successors, they do much to reveal Constantine’s true nature. He was a petty and fickle man, famously having a servant blinded because he was late in bringing him a bowl of custard, and was incredibly paranoid and cruel. The beginning of his reign coincided with the beginning of a reign of terror that would paralyze the City of the World’s Desire for months on end.
Constantine was possessed of a unique and bizarre mixture of paranoia and stupidity. While he feared assassins in every shadow, he allowed--nay, he encouraged--the provincial nobility to increase their power exponentially. Within weeks of the beginning of his sole reign, he had repealed all of his brother’s policies designed to protect the common people from the magnates. In hopes of placating the many men who he was sure wanted to kill him, he would grant any request put before him no matter how depraved or stupid. He fell at once under the influence of the court eunuchs, and they manipulated him into imprisoning, blinding or mutilating dozens of loyal attendants in the first weeks of his reign, among them one Constantine Bourtzes, who had briefly been Basil’s secretary years before. Despite his fear of the aristocracy, he did not attempt to rouse the army to his banner in any manner whatsoever, considering the nearly suicidal path of imprisoning several popular generals before deciding that this would be a bridge too far. Nonetheless, his tyranny extended across the capital in a way unseen for decades, creating far more enemies than he could ever purge and in many cases even obliviously empowering those who despised him while brutalizing them who supported him.
Into this setting enter one Bardas Phokas the Youngest. Bardas was the scion of the Phokai, an old aristocratic family that had reached its apogee fifty years before with the ascension of Nikephoros II as regent for and eventual co-emperor with Basil II. Nikephoros had been overthrown and murdered by his nephew after six years on the throne, and the family’s fortunes had fallen quickly afterwards. In 971, Bardas’ grandfather of the same name revolted against Basil, swiftly being defeated and forced to flee into exile. He had returned more than fifteen years and was similarly defeated, falling in battle against the basileus during the revolt of Bardas Skleros. For this, the Phokas had been essentially blackballed from the highest halls of power, Basil even going so far as to ban any member from owning more than two hundred acres of land in 996. Things had seemed to be on the mend when Nikephoros Phokas Barytrachelos, the governor of Kappadokia, had revolted in 1022, ultimately being murdered by one of his co-conspirators before he had even come within sight of the Marmara. As punishment for having revolted thrice, the Phokai were permanently smashed; they were forbidden to own any property whatsoever, and most of the family’s scions changed their names to avoid the scorn of their peers. Bardas was the only son of Nikephoros, and, having concluded that there was no way in hell anyone would ever forget his uncle’s deeds, hadn’t even bothered to do so, leaving him as the last male member of the house, and the last altogether bar an elderly aunt living in Trebizond.
Bardas’ genial nature has almost certainly been exaggerated by later historians, but he was doubtless a fairly agreeable man. He was of average size and build, had dark hair and dark eyes but fairly light skin, likely due to an Armenian or Georgian mother. He was well-spoken and fairly well-educated, but possessed much of the air of a soldier thanks to years as an officer in the eastern armies prior to his uncle’s coup, and as a common footman in Bulgaria afterwards. In 1025, he departed--some say abandoned--his post along the Danube and went to the capital, likely seeking to make a fortune independent of his fairly sordid past. His arrival in the city did not go unnoticed, of course, and he was arrested within days of entering the city. After spending several weeks in a cell, he was released by an administrative error[1] and fled into the underbelly of the capital. He was furious at this false arrest and the rough treatment which he had been given despite years of loyal service and constant insults, and despaired of ever achieving a normal life. As he sat in a cheap tavern in the Pempton, bad wine churning in his stomach, he decided his only road forward one lay in going for broke and seizing the throne.
Of course, this was easier said than done, and he needed allies if his plans would bring him anything other than death or blinding. Fortunately, potential co-conspirators were in plentiful supply in a city full of restive aristocrats and scheming eunuchs, and within a few weeks Bardas was, with his natural gift for words, able to win over several dozen men to his cause. Chief among these conspirators were the Bourtzes brothers, Mikhael, Samouel and Theognostos, who were the brothers of Constantine Bourtzes and were understandably more than a little miffed that their brother had his eyes gouged out and hands cut off after decades of loyal service, and were more than a little afraid that the same might happen to them. Mikhael and Samouel were both senior bureaucrats and were well-positioned to siphon off money to support the plot, while Theognostos was an experienced commander and, moreover, had a retinue of several dozen veterans that would be crucial to any coup. Bardas was able to earn the support of several members of the Imperial bodyguard by a number of means, chief among them the hetaireia Isaakios Komnenos, who was resentful towards the emperor after his uncle, Nikephoros, and his family had been arrested and blinded on false charges in June 1026[2]. During that summer, he became drinking buddies with another member of the palace guard, Nikephoros Bryennios[3], who was charged with securing one of the complex’s gates, and managed to convince him of the validity of his claim to the throne, as well as befriending a bureaucrat named Constantine Monomachos who had fallen upon hard times and was quite upset with the sitting basileus. He also convinced his cousin, Nikephoros Botaneiates, to support his coup. Finally, he had managed to win over the ambitious doux of Thessalonica, Bulgaria and Serbia, Constantine, who promised to strike for Bardas if he succeeded in overthrowing Constantine VIII.
The plan was as follows: The fighters would be smuggled into a large, vacant cellar of the palace by Komnenos and Bryennios, which Monomachos and the Bourtzes brothers would have stocked with enough supplies to keep them hidden. On the night of the coup, Botaneiates would incite a riot in the slums, and the conspirators would start setting fires across the city. While the palace guard was weakened dealing with these, Bardas and his men would rush the Imperial bedchamber and kill Constantine, then rush across the Augustaion to the Hagia Sophia to be crowned. Theodora, the younger of the emperor’s daughters at “only” forty-four, would be brought from the women’s quarters and forced to marry Bardas to secure his legitimacy. The riot would then be quelled and the fires drenched, leaving Bardas as the savior of the city and (semi) legitimate emperor.
By September, there were eight chief conspirators and roughly two hundred potential fighters, mostly Komnenoi or Bourtzoi retainers with a handful of mutinous guards and soldiers in the mix, all of whom were only informed of vague details at best. However, someone must have leaked, for on the night of 16 September 1026, Constantine dispatched a dozen Varangians to arrest Bardas in the inn in which he resided. Bardas wasn’t a complete fool, however, and in addition to residing there under a false name, he had also pried up several floorboards to act as an alarm. When one of the Varangians creeping up the hallway stepped on a loose board, Bardas shot up and flew out the window before the guards had even reached the barricaded door. He stole a horse from the front of the inn and galloped down the Mese to warn his co-conspirators.
Half an hour later, Theognostos Bourtzes was woken by Bardas hammering on his door, breathlessly telling him that the coup had been found out and they had to go, NOW! The Bourtzes retainers were hurriedly woken and mustered, while Bardas rode down the street to the Komnenoi capital villa to inform a bewildered Ioannes Komnenos that his brother was in on a plot against the emperor, and that if he didn’t rally his retainers immediately they’d all be sharing a cell in the bowels of the palace. Within ten minutes, eighty armed men were making for the palace in a dead sprint. They were spotted by sentries in the Tower of Belisarius, but were mistaken for priests and no alarm was raised. Bardas reached the palace at the same time the Varangians returned to inform Constantine of their failure, but the cool-headed usurper managed to steer his column away from them and to Bryennios’ side gate. The guard was confused to find them there without forewarning, but realized they had passed the point of no return long ago and let them in. They rushed down the hallway towards the Imperial bedchambers only to be met by a panicked Komnenos who told Bardas that the cry had been raised and there were now several hundred Norsemen between them and the bedchambers, and several thousand more were assembling nearby. Thinking quickly, Bardars ordered Theognostos to continue forward and distracted the Varangains with as much noise as possible, while he, the Komnenoi brothers, Bryennios and a famed soldier named Stephanos crept around to the back. Bardas and his small force leapt out of a nearby window and sprinted through the gardens around the palace to the bedchambers. Silently, they scaled the wall, and at his signal Bardas and Isaakios Komnenos smashed open a window and rushed in. The three guards present were stunned by their sudden appearance and before they could react two were dead, another knocked out and the door barred with a sword. Constantine was shouting incoherently at the assassins and thrashing about his bed, and without a second though Bardas stabbed him in the chest. The emperor was so fat that the dagger failed to do any damage, and he shouted his last words: “Oh, how cruel!” Stephanos then tried to lop off his head; his neck was so swollen it took two blows to sever it.
With the Varangians now battering down the door, Bardas shouted that he was emperor now and pressed Constantine’s head against a gash that had been cut through one of the doors. With Constantine now definitely dead, the Varangains paused their assault, no doubt mulling over what to do next. Bardas shouted an offer of a 150% pay raise, and at this the Varangians hailed him as emperor, raising him on their shield in the garden after escorting him thence. Bardas sent men to fetch Theodora from the women’s quarters while he and his makeshift army raced to the Hagia Sophia. The Patriarch, Alexios the Stoudite, was asleep in his neighboring apartments when he was woken by Bardas’ men, and initially refused to crown Bardas while the blood of the usurper’s predecessor was smattered across his tunic. A promise of several hundred pounds of gold to the Patriarchate and carte blanche for Alexios’ blossoming ecclesiastical reforms managed to convince him. With the crown recently taken from a dead man upon his head, Bardas was crowned as basileus shortly before midnight, and a few minutes later the basileus married a slightly upset Theodora, legitimizing him as best he could.
As dawn rose on 17 September, the citizens of Constantinople were informed that Constantine was dead and the House of Macedon effectively extinguished. The expected riots were strangled before they could break out by the troops scattered across the city to deal with the disturbances of the night before. The fires which had been set the night before were being slowly quenched. Bardas I Phokas was now the Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans, in name at the very least.
Of course, Constantinople was not the empire itself, and there were many loyalists to the House of Makedon in the provinces….
[1] This is the Point of Divergence; everything hereafter is alternate history
[2] This ATL, caused by Constantine’s general pettiness after some servant or subordinate messes something up right before Komnenos is dragged in
[3] Father of the OTL general