Maria followed the ramparts east. An octagonal tower at the intersection of the Danoubios and Okeanos wings of the palace – so named from the great halls that occupied the second floor of each – afforded an extensive panorama of the city stretching away to the end of its peninsula, where the acropolis was largely obscured by rain and cloud. Her gaze followed the line of the sea walls down the Golden Horn to the wharves assigned to the Pisans and Genoese, which even on this last day of the year were packed with galleys and men bustling about loading and unloading stacks of goods. Turning more to her right, she could see the domes of the Church of the Theotokos Pammakaristos, standing proudly on its terrace on the city’s Fifth Hill, and the Church of the Holy Apostles, the mausoleum of the Emperors from Constantine to Justinian, atop the summit of the Fourth Hill. Behind it, the ancient arches of the Aqueduct of Valens marched grandly across the valley between the Fourth and Third Hills. A little to its left, on the flank of the Fourth Hill, she could see her own family’s mausoleum – the Church and Monastery of the Pantocrator, where her own father, mother, grandfather, and great-grandfather were buried.

Three months after Manuel’s end, she still had not fully come to terms with her father’s death. The Emperor’s final decline began towards the end of the summer. As his body weakened and his lungs struggled for breath, he took frequent baths, hoping the hot water and steam would help him, but they brought only temporary relief. The court astrologers continued to predict a miraculous recovery and another fourteen years of life, but by September 14th, his son Alexius’s eleventh birthday, Manuel was so weak he could only walk short distances before stopping to rest. Recognizing that his time was short, he prepared a final testament, naming the Empress Maria as the principal Regent during his son’s minority. To assist her, he appointed a regency council that included the universally respected Patriarch Theodosius; the porphyrogenita and her young husband; Manuel’s illegitimate son, the protostrator Alexius; and the old Emperor’s favorite nephew, the protosebastos Alexius Comnenus, son of his beloved but long-dead older brother Andronicus.

His testament also provided that the Empress Maria should take a nun’s vows and enter a convent after his death. This last stipulation was only partly attributable to typical masculine possessiveness and jealousy extending even to the grave. If Maria took another husband, there was always the risk that her new lord would either produce another heir, or have some previous son of his own, whom he would rather see on the throne than Manuel’s own son Alexius. Moreover, Manuel recognized that it would be important for his widow to maintain her neutrality among the various factions within the imperial court – and choosing a husband would also typically mean acquiring a prominent family as her new in-laws, which would necessarily have connections, loyalties, alliances, and enemies already associated with it.

Finally, Manuel accommodated the old patriarch Theodosius’s persistent pleas by preparing a written statement renouncing his belief in astrology. After his own disappointment in the astrologers’ prognostications during the past several weeks, it was an easy enough concession to make.

Manuel spent the last days of his life propped up in a bedroom on the upper floor of the palace, so he could look out at the countryside beyond the great walls where he had so enjoyed hunting in his younger days. He wheezed and coughed, laboring to draw air to his lungs. On the morning of September 24th, a melancholy day, overcast with lowering clouds, the Emperor checked his pulse in his thigh, and then advised his family and attendants that his time had come. He asked them to bring him a monk’s habit, so that he might at last put aside the vanities of this world – however briefly – before he finally passed from it.

Had everyone not been on the verge of tears, the resulting scene would have been comic. Servant after servant responded to the porphyrogenita’s queries blankly or shrugged their shoulders with nervous embarrassment. It quickly became apparent that this last request had not been anticipated, and no one had any idea where such a garment could be found. Ranier was making ready to ride to the monastery of SS. Cosmas & Damian beyond the walls when someone managed to locate a ragged old cloak of coarse black wool. The Emperor stood so that his attendants could help him removal his luxurious royal vestments and silk undergarments. Then, naked, he raised his arms above his head so he could slide on the threadbare cloak. It was a poor thing, tattered and torn, and so short it did not even fully cover his thighs. But it seemed to bring the failing Emperor an additional measure of peace as he lay back on the bed, his muscular legs and bare knees exposed to all, and waited for his end. It came towards the ninth hour of the day, as the swallows returned to their roosts. He wheezed one final time, then gave a long, peaceful sigh, and the Bible he was reading dropped from his lifeless hands.

After almost 62 years of life and 38 years of rule, Manuel was at peace – but none of his survivors were. He had felt the Empress must take a nun’s veil after his death because he feared the competition for her hand that was otherwise sure to break out among the great nobles and court officials. Manuel’s plans had a sound basis, but they failed to acknowledge the passionate spirit of his still youthful and beautiful wife, who was just entering her middle thirties.

The Empress made some show of complying with her dead husband’s final demand. She took the veil and adopted a new name – Xene, meaning "foreigner." She remained resident in the palace, but the porphyrogenita had not really expected otherwise. What did shock Manuel’s daughter, however, was the indecent speed with which the men of the great families began vying for her affections. With Manuel not even in his grave the length of a full moon, the porphyrogenita watched in amazement and disgust as the men of the imperial court perfumed their bodies with fragrant oils, preened themselves before the widowed Empress in their finest clothes and family jewels, and competed with each other in paying her compliments and gallantries. All that had been bad enough – the porphyrogenita thought she might seal her ears if she had to listen to one more bad verse comparing the Empress to Helen or Aphrodite – but what really appalled her had been the Empress’s failure to quickly and emphatically rebuff her suitors. And then, with growing disgust, Maria realized that the Empress was enjoying these attentions – indeed, she was actually encouraging them, notwithstanding her recent widowhood and her religious vows!

Maria’s contempt for her stepmother’s shallowness and vanity intensified as she watched her parading around the palace with several foppish gallants in tow, or exchanging flirtatious glances and sallies across the banqueting table with her various swains. But then, shortly before Christmas, Maria began to sense that something had changed around the palace. The Empress began focusing her attention almost exclusively on the protosebastos, Alexius Comnenus. He was close by her side at almost all of her public appearances. They spent long hours conferring together in the Empress’s rooms, sometimes dined together privately, and on occasion went for rides outside the city walls with only a handful of attendants and bodyguards. In the increasingly infrequent meetings the Empress called of the Regency Council, she consistently deferred to the protosebastos’s judgment.

There were other disquieting signs. The Empress’s other suitors suddenly seemed to be hanging back from her, sullen and resentful. And the palace rumor network suddenly and inexplicably went dead – at least as far as Maria’s ability to tap into it was concerned. When she commented to her attendants on the Empress’s growing closeness with the protosebastos, they seemed uncomfortable and quickly changed the subject.

The porphyrogenita found the Empress’s sudden new partiality for the protosebastos incomprehensible. True, he had been Matthew’s favorite nephew, and his closeness to his uncle had given Alexius ample opportunity to worm his way into the Empress’s confidence. But Maria found it impossible to take him seriously as a senior adviser. He had essentially inherited the position of protosebastos from his older brother John, who had died four years earlier. Alexius was a life-long creature of the court who had never joined the late Emperor on any of his campaigns. To the extent he had distinguished himself at all, he had done so only for his notorious laziness. He wasted much of the day sleeping, and even darkened his room with specially made heavy curtains so that the bright morning sunshine would not wake him before he was ready.

Yet now it seemed that nothing could be done, except through him. If a petitioner wanted to see the Empress or the boy Emperor, Alexius had to agree – and there were rumors that a bribe was usually required. Alexius had the final say concerning who was to be appointed to all positions at court or in the provinces – and, again, there were rumblings that Alexius was selling these offices to the highest bidder. Because people were still occasionally able to win the boy Emperor’s consent to proposals when Alexius’s attention was elsewhere, he had suddenly announced that in order to be effective, all imperial edicts had henceforth to be countersigned by him with the frog-green ink that was the official color associated with the rank of protosebastos.

Maria had already begun to discreetly rally opposition to the protosebastos and the Empress among the other members of the Regency Council. Then, a few days ago, she received information that suddenly transformed everything.

Although he was her husband, she still found it hard to think of Ranier as an equal – he was so much younger, and still a youth in so many important ways. But he was intelligent and charming, and the young bucks around the palace enjoyed his company. As a result, he had developed sources of intelligence that were not available to Maria. One afternoon, he told her that when he was drinking with several of the young courtiers after the Christmas celebrations, the others began engaging in coarse and knowing repartee about the Empress and the protosebastos. There was clearly a widespread belief around the palace that they had become lovers.

Much as she detested her stepmother, even Maria at first found that almost impossible to believe. Manuel had barely been in his grave three months – and the Empress had taken a nun’s vows! She might be vain and frivolous, but could her promises to her husband of twenty years – to say nothing of the Church, and of God – possibly mean so little to her?

Maria then got busy. By a judicious employment of a combination of her intimidating personality and various financial inducements, within a day she had confirmed the truth about the Empress’s relationship with the protosebastos from no fewer than three members of the imperial court. Once she had satisfied herself of the truth, Maria went back to her chambers and vomited. Then she raged at the frivolity and foolishness of this woman who had been her father’s wife for two decades, and whom he had loved to distraction, but who had now proven so casually faithless and inconstant to him.

Losing all appetite, she fasted for two days. And now she needed to clear her head, cool her emotions, and decide on a course of action.

It was clear that the protosebastos must be removed. Avaricious, lazy, and short-sighted, he was capable of wrecking the Empire if allowed to continue to exercise the power the Empress had so foolishly entrusted to him. Even at the best of times, potentially dangerous neighbors – Normans, Turks, Arabs, Cumans, and Hungarians – surrounded the Empire on all sides, even as restless subject peoples, like the Serbs and Bulgars, threatened it from within. And the regency of an eleven-year-old Emperor was a particularly dangerous time. Maria felt with cold certainty that it was only a matter of time before one of the Empire’s enemies – maybe more than one – chose to strike. The Empire must have sound and steady leadership when that occurred.

So Alexius had to be eliminated as a factor in the Empire’s governance. The question was how. The porphyrogenita fingered her worry beads and gazed out over the panorama of churches, palaces, monasteries, townhouses, and the fields and kitchen gardens that still occupied much of the space inside the city’s great outer walls. Ranier had a substantial force of retainers, funded largely by his revenues from Thessalonica. But the protosebastos and the Empres commanded the loyalty of the Varangian Guard. They could perhaps manage to seize Alexius and blind him. But the Varangian Guards would almost certainly attempt a rescue. Ranier’s men were more than capable of holding their own in a fight – they were mostly tough, adventurous knights from the West. But they would be greatly outnumbered by the Varangian Guard in any showdown. If she attempted a coup and it miscarried, she, Ranier, and their supporters would likely come out big losers.

As she worked through the alternatives, the answer grew clear. They could easily hire an assassin or two to strike down the protosebastos. The man had plenty of enemies, and Constantinople always had its share of cutpurses who were game for any unsavory task if the price was right. It could be done through so many intermediaries and cut-outs that the killers at the end of the chain wouldn’t even know who had ultimately hired them. Once Alexius was out of the way, the Empress could be belatedly packed off to a convent -- which, after all, was nothing more than she had committed to anyway. A reconstituted Regency Council could then reassume its rightful role as the leaders of the State.

Having reasoned the problem through to this conclusion, Maria felt a great sense of calm. It was of course unfortunate, in some moral sense, that Alexius had to die. But many far worthier men, who had families that depended upon them, would die if the Empire’s enemies sensed the weakness and corruption of its current government and picked this moment to strike. And it was Alexius himself who had made his death necessary. For reasons of avarice and lust, he had aspired to a position in the State far beyond his capacities or past service. No one made him administer the State so corruptly, and it was his own weakness that led him to belly with the Empress and warm her bed with his lust when Manuel was not three months in the grave. God would surely not protect a man who had so foully corrupted a recent widow and a tonsured nun, Maria thought. Serene and resolved, she turned away from the ramparts and descended the staircase back to the interior of the palace.

Principal Sources:

Charles M. Brand, Byzantium Confronts the West: 1180-1204 (1968)

Harry Magoulias, ed., O City of Byzantium, Annals of Nicetas Choniates

Stephen Runciman, "Blachernae Palace and its Decoration," in Studies in Memory of David Talbot Rice (1975)

The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (entries on Manuel I, Bela III, and the Church and Palace of Blachernae)

The Blue Guide to Istanbul