WI: Bohemond Married Anna Komnene?

What if Bohemond Married Anna Komnene?

Based on how badly relations between Bohemond and Byzantium turned out in OTL I thought this would be an interesting divergence. The unmarried Bohemond spent more time in Constantinople then any other Crusader leader and is said to have met Anna who was intrigued by him. So what if Bohemond had of arranged a marriage to Anna as part of some deal with Emperor Alexius? What would happen to Antioch? Other major butterflies?

The Emperor's daughter, Anna Comnena, leaves a good portrait of him in her Alexiad; she met him for the first time when she was fourteen, and was quite fascinated by him. She left no similar portrait of any other Crusader prince. Of Bohemond, she wrote:

Now [Bohemond] was such as, to put it briefly, had never before been seen in the land of the Romans [that is, Greeks], be he either of the barbarians or of the Greeks (for he was a marvel for the eyes to behold, and his reputation was terrifying). Let me describe the barbarian's appearance more particularly – he was so tall in stature that he overtopped the tallest by nearly one cubit, narrow in the waist and loins, with broad shoulders and a deep chest and powerful arms. And in the whole build of the body he was neither too slender nor overweighted with flesh, but perfectly proportioned and, one might say, built in conformity with the canon of Polycleitus... His skin all over his body was very white, and in his face the white was tempered with red. His hair was yellowish, but did not hang down to his waist like that of the other barbarians; for the man was not inordinately vain of his hair, but had it cut short to the ears. Whether his beard was reddish, or any other colour I cannot say, for the razor had passed over it very closely and left a surface smoother than chalk... His blue eyes indicated both a high spirit and dignity; and his nose and nostrils breathed in the air freely; his chest corresponded to his nostrils and by his nostrils...the breadth of his chest. For by his nostrils nature had given free passage for the high spirit which bubbled up from his heart. A certain charm hung about this man but was partly marred by a general air of the horrible... He was so made in mind and body that both courage and passion reared their crests within him and both inclined to war. His wit was manifold and crafty and able to find a way of escape in every emergency. In conversation he was well informed, and the answers he gave were quite irrefutable. This man who was of such a size and such a character was inferior to the Emperor alone in fortune and eloquence and in other gifts of nature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemond_I_of_Antioch
 
I always got the impression Anna was quite taken with him. Of course, she would have been around 14-16 when she met him, so that can go a long way towards explaining her interest.
 
Unfortunately, what Anna wants isn't very relevant; she was the eldest child and purple-born daughter of the emperor, and those don't get married except for political advantage. Historically, she's married off to Nikephoros Bryennios in 1097, the same year she meets Bohemond, who at that point is little better than a landless adventurer (albeit an adventurer with an army). By the end of 1097 he's still besieging Antioch. To put it mildly, he is not a strong prospect to bolster the power of Alexios via marriage.

The other issue here is that Alexios was never very fond of Bohemond. Bohemond had a history (along with his dad) of invading and plundering Greece, and he didn't get any better about that after taking Antioch.

The only way I could see this happening would involve massive changes to both the career and personality of Bohemond, and then it's not really Bohemond anymore.

If you really want to give Anna to a Norman, it might be easier to go with Tancred, Bohemond's nephew. Have Bohemond die in captivity sometime in 1100-1103, and have Nikephoros Bryennios fall off a horse or something. Tancred was doing pretty well against the Byzantines as Bohemond's regent; perhaps with a recently-widowed daughter in hand, Alexius decides to try and bring Tancred and Antioch into the fold with marriage. With a bit of luck and some Byzantine support, maybe Harran (1104) doesn't turn out so badly for Tancred. I have no idea how likely Tancred would be to accept such a proposal, but it's at least mildly more plausible than Bohemond+Anna.

Also, Bohemond is like 30 years older than Anna. Eew.
 
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fi11222

Banned
Unfortunately, what Anna wants isn't very relevant; she was the eldest child and purple-born daughter of the emperor, and those don't get married except for political advantage.
She can elope with him and trigger some sort of major political crisis.

The girl seemed to have had a mind of her own. She even sort of tried to become Emperor on her own later on.
 
I think you could arrange a marriage between the two with a bit of POD work. Bohemond lead Antioch into several campaigns against Byzantium, whereas Anna was later sent to a convent for trying to take over the Empire after her father's death. Maybe if Alexius somehow becomes suspicious of her but has no definitive proof, he might decide to kill two birds with one stone by marrying Anna off to Bohemond, thus both ending the threat from Antioch and sending Anna away to a de facto exile.
 
She can elope with him and trigger some sort of major political crisis.

The girl seemed to have had a mind of her own. She even sort of tried to become Emperor on her own later on.

These two ambitions are somewhat at odds, and I expect she would have known that, even as a teenager. Eloping from her father's court with a barbarian mercenary warlord and wandering off into Turk Country may be a great way to stick it to dear ol' dad, but it's not the fast-track to the imperial throne. It's the opposite of that. Nikephoros Bryennios, her OTL husband, is a much better asset for gaining the throne, and he might have gotten it for her too had he not been too loyal to betray John.

Whatever Anna may have thought of Bohemond, she is a purple-born Byzantine princess raised in the palaces, and I don't think being a Frank's teenage bride on a dusty road through highland Anatolia is something that ever would have occurred to her as a good idea.
 
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fi11222

Banned
These two ambitions are somewhat at odds, and I expect she would have known that, even as a teenager. Eloping from her father's court with a barbarian mercenary warlord and wandering off into Turk Country may be a great way to stick it to dear ol' dad, but it's not the fast-track to the imperial throne. It's the opposite of that.
Sure, but her imperial ambitions came later, when she was more mature.

As a teenager, we can very plausibly assume that a strong-willed girl like her would have had other priorities. She might have fancied herself as a new Cleopatra, for example, turning a rough western military man into a world conqueror. Or her hormones might just have overpowered her. She was human after all.
 
Sure, but her imperial ambitions came later, when she was more mature.

As a teenager, we can very plausibly assume that a strong-willed girl like her would have had other priorities. She might have fancied herself as a new Cleopatra, for example, turning a rough western military man into a world conqueror. Or her hormones might just have overpowered her. She was human after all.

The problem with any interpretation of her character - or, for that matter, of her "interest" in Bohemond - is that all of its comes from her own writings, presumably none of which were set to paper before 1137. When we read her description of Bohemond, for instance, that's not a page out of a teenage girl's diary, it's the reminiscence of a woman in her 50s about a man she had met once as a teenager who by that point had been dead for decades.

Consider that Anna is a writer, and a good one. She's not writing a gossipy autobiography, she's writing a history book glorifying her father. To do that, she creates characters like Bohemond as ideal foils - because the best opponent for a perfect hero is a perfect villain, a man who is vital, strong, charismatic, and awesome in every other way except for the fact that he's rotten to the core. He's Evil Alexios, Alexios with a metaphorical goatee, the guy who approaches the emperor's brilliance and perfection but who must inevitably be cast down by the Good Emperor because good must always triumph over evil, even if evil is clever, well-built, and has a great haircut. Alexios can't be up against ugly, incompetent rubes, because that's not a fitting challenge for his glory. Teenagers might indeed be overpowered by "hormones," but women in their 50s-60s generally are not, and I really doubt that she wrote that bit about Bohemond's physical description because she just couldn't stop herself from telling her audience what a dreamboat Bohemond was.

Yes, Anna was human, and humans can be unpredictable. I'll admit that she was strong-willed, or at least showed herself as such later in life. All I'm saying is that there's no reason to assume that she was more likely to run off with Bohemond than any other random girl he met on the Crusade, and as a young woman of privilege, culture, wealth, and intelligence I'd say she was probably a lot less likely to do that than most.
 
Thanks for the comments thus far. :) Could a POD be that Bohemond is stubborn and refuses to swear an oath of allegiance to the Alexius before going on crusade. Perhaps the marriage could be part of some deal in order to get Bohemond to swear the oath?
 
Thanks for the comments thus far. :) Could a POD be that Bohemond is stubborn and refuses to swear an oath of allegiance to the Alexius before going on crusade. Perhaps the marriage could be part of some deal in order to get Bohemond to swear the oath?
What I understand is that Bohemund is too lowly during the time Anna is free, and when he is better off he's too untrustworthy that his nephew is a better bet if Anna happens to be widowed.
 
The problem with any interpretation of her character - or, for that matter, of her "interest" in Bohemond - is that all of its comes from her own writings, presumably none of which were set to paper before 1137. When we read her description of Bohemond, for instance, that's not a page out of a teenage girl's diary, it's the reminiscence of a woman in her 50s about a man she had met once as a teenager who by that point had been dead for decades.

Do we see any other instances of bias in her writings?
 
Do we see any other instances of bias in her writings?

Bias is present everywhere. It's certainly present in medieval histories. The Alexiad is intended as a history, but it's also an attempt at polemic, to rescue the deeds of Alexios from the appropriation of his successors John and Manuel and others who thwarted Anna's own ambition for the throne. It's a historical epic, an Iliad for Anna's times (in fact it's even named after the Iliad - Ilias vs. Alexias). There are some parts where she is honest even to the detriment of her subject, like saying that Alexios was actually rather short (though she emphasizes that he still looked imposing when seated upon the throne). She critiques Alexios on certain things, like his pro-Western sympathies; Anna is a staunch anti-Westerner and wants to make sure you that you, the reader, know it. Even great heroes need a few flaws to be believable and to explain their occasional missteps. But Anna also has an agenda and she sticks to it, contrasting the wisdom of Alexios with his bungling descendants, lamenting that "all that was most desirable vanished together with the Emperor, and his efforts were all rendered vain after his departure by the stupidity of his successors to the throne." In fact John II was a rather good emperor, but that's not what Anna wants you to think.

The Alexiad is a fine piece of writing and extraordinarily useful as a history, but like all medieval sources you can't just take it at face value. You have to consider her viewpoint, her life, the time at which she wrote this, and so on. She's a mature and intelligent woman writing a history with a complex and personal agenda; she might occasionally reveal something about herself in the process of writing, but when she includes this flattering description of Bohemond you can bet that it's intended to serve a purpose. Many of the Frankish leaders, and particularly the Normans, are larger-than-life in the Alexiad (sometimes literally so; some are described as giants). They are great and charismatic men, cunning and devious men, and Bohemond is the arch-Norman, the most perfect and yet most terrible of them. They are the true antagonists of the epic, even more dangerous than the Turks (who are portrayed as more trustworthy and reasonable than the Franks). She clearly sets up this antagonism between Alexios and the Bohemond in her description of Bohemond: "Only one man, the Emperor, could defeat an adversary of such character."
 
I think that the premise is interesting - marriage in exchange for loyalty, add in backing his claim as heir to the south of Italy, and for the child of that union to be the Roman Emperor (perhaps in exchange for being raised in Constantinople with a Norman guard), sets the stage for a radically different first Crusade. A Crusader who is interested in NOT wrecking the Roman Empire, could see the Crusaders take territory for the Roman Empire, rather than for themselves. Especially if Bohemond is supported by Alexios to lead the Crusade, which would mean you could see.

1) A Hauteville Despot of the Holy Land - essentially King of Jerusalem. Tightly allied to Constantinople, technically Catholic, with both Romans that are able to come and support him.
2) A Roman Empire with the expectation of the massive inheritance of the Hauteville Levant, in a healthier position than OTL.
3) A Sicily with a rival for the throne that has a huge army, and the support of the Roman Emperor.
4) A Pope that has to plan for a potential Komenid-Hauteville invasion of S.Italy, leaving it firmly in the hands of a Pro-Roman, rather than Pro-Rome, ruler, upsetting that ruler may prompt the invasion of S.Italy, and potentially Rome itself!

Assuming a successful King Bohemond, he could very well use his claim on S.Italy, or the threat of following up on that claim, to ask the Pope to support him in an invasion of Egypt, fresh Crusader army, wealthier target than before, strong ally to the north. Seems plausible to me. We saw how as Prince of Antioch he wanted to expand, taking Egypt would be the coup. Bastard son of an upstart merc, becoming King of Jerusalem and Egypt, potentially Defender of the Faith and Father of the Emperor of Rome?

The Reign of the Komnenid-Hauteville successor would be interesting. He would have to be Norman enough for the Normans, Roman enough for Constantinople. He would be the physical embodiment of the Schism - and if his father takes S.Italy, or KH I does, with Rome just across the border - whilst still having to play the politics of the Middle East, with the Great Schism almost entirely in their hands.

There is certainly a lot of difficulty there, especially in convincing Alexios of the partnership - after all, all he gets the chance of a grand-child that inherits Justinians Empire born again - whilst assisting a sizable Catholic Norman power, rather than Catholics fighting for him. No money, merely a long-term project, and a bit of a free hand/chance of support for conquering Anatolia. He might be able to get a Matrilineal Marriage to make the dynasty be Komnenid rather than a joint Dynasty, but I can see the deal breaking over suzerainty - is Alexios in charge? Can Bohemond be supported in that case?
 
A better time for a Byzantine-Norman marriage would be well in advance of the First Crusade. If the Norman invasions of the empire in 1082 or 1084 were much more successful, Alexios would be in real trouble, and it wouldn't be the first time the Byzantines traded a bride for military advantage. But the age differential again rears its ugly head: Anna is born in 1083, and while the Byzantines were just fine with infant betrothal I'm not sure that would be enough for the Normans. Alexios does have a 30-ish year old widowed sister, Theodora, whose husband was killed in battle in 1074 and who at some later point became a nun, and there was precedent for a Byzantine emperor to pull an imperial lady out of the convent for a marriage. I realize it's not as "romantic" as Bohemond and Anna, but Theodora has the advantage of actually being Bohemond's same age, and while she's not porphyrogenita she's still the emperor's sister.
 
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