The Patriarch Polyeuctos, aging but strong-willed, refused to countenance Theophano's marriage to John Tzimisces, her husband's murderer. He refused to even recognize John as Emperor unless he agreed to pack Theophano off to a nunnery on Proti in the Princes' Islands. Norwich (II, 211-12 & n.) indicates that she escaped from the island a few months afterwards and sought refuge in St. Sophia. The chamberlain Basil ordered her forcibly removed, but he or John did assent to her request that she be afforded one final interview with her former lover. On this occasion, however, she apparently reverted to the barmaid she once was, verbally abusing the Emperor and actually attacking the Chamberlain with her fists. For these offenses, she was packed off to a very remote exile in Armenia. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium indicates that after John died in 976, she was allowed to return to Constantinople, but it provides no further information about the remainder of her life.