Birthday Greetings #3

Happy birthday to Romanos II, Byzantine emperor and general nonentity. Romanos was living proof that if you're nobody special then it doesn't really matter if you were born in a porphyry tiled room in the most expensive palace this side of Baghdad. At least he was living proof until he died. Now he's dead proof.

For the record Romanus was born around 938 AD and died less than thirty years later. During the course of his life possibly the only sign of originality he showed was in picking an inn keepers daughter for his wife. The two of them are suspected of murdering his father but that implies more initiative than Romanos seemed to have. Once emperor he left everything in the hands of his advisors and went hunting. A few years later he was dead. His wife was suspected of poisoning him but in Byzantium for an emperor to be poisoned by his nearest and dearest was pretty much noted as "natural causes" on the coroners report.

Much more fun is his wife who was everything a Byzantine empress should be. Romanos changed her name to Theophano, possibly because "Hey, innkeepers daughter" wasn't an appropriate address for an empress. If anyone murdered Romanos' father it was her. She had a great old time, intriguing, plotting and banging generals while her husband was out hunting. Theophano can probably be acquitted of murdering Romanos though, it was inconvenient timing for her. She had just given birth and a widowed empress with a couple of infant children was target number one for every ambitious psychopath in the empire. If she was lucky she would marry one of them. If she was unlucky she would be quietly strangled or worse, locked up in a nunnery.

As it turned out she married one of them. A charming character named Nikephoras Phokas. His nickname "The White Death of the Saracens" tells you much about his character and his career. He was ugly, boorish, crude and generally unpleasant. He was also the top soldier in the empire. Coming a close second was John Tzimisces who seduced Theophano, or vice versa, murdered Nikephoras and took over the empire himself. As for Theophano; she wound up in a nunnery.