PART TWENTY-FIVE: The Fall of the House of Komnenos (1242-1257)
Serious Byzness: A Byzantine History Blog
http://seriousbyzness.tumblr.com
Okay, so, Valeria III, shitty teen and expert rabbit hunter, just totally got her ass killed. Nobody’s really sure who did it. Like, we still don’t know? You can find serious historians arguing that it was Bérard of Modena, the Black Chamber, the last gasp of the Hashshahshin, the Golden Horde, the Pope, Hypatia di Pistoia (step 1. kill the puppet empress who is the entire basis of your power step 2. ???? step 3. profit), the Gauhar Ayin, and who knows how else.
But many fingers pointed at the new empress Gabrielia I Komnene, sister of St. Valeria herself. She certainly had the most to gain from the sudden death of Valeria III, anyway. She was known to be cruel and cynical, so it wasn’t a big leap to assume that she was a kingslayer alone.
(Historical footnote: We’ve already gone over Princess Iouliana’s death in battle, and how Gerasimos Komnenos removed himself from the succession by becoming a creepy monk who worshipped his own mother as a living saint, but for the record, Valeria II’s other two daughters died of pneumonia and childbirth, respectively, in the 1320s, which is why Valeria’s 47 year old sister was suddenly empress)
Gabrielia’s husband was Tsar Sudislav the Great of Kiev. His dynasty– then known simply as “of Yaroslavl”, although they later adopted the name “Yaroslavovich” in honor of their most famous dynast– began relatively humbly when the bastard son of a Ceska Lipa (wow, those guys really get around) noblewoman was granted status as a nobleman in his own right. His son married the Rurikovich Grand Duchess of Kiev, and Sudislav III became the first Yaroslavovich (well, they weren’t the Yaroslavoviches yet, but you know) ruler of Kiev.
St. Valeria, eager for warm bodies to send into her various wars, married her sister off to Sudislav the Great, and he duly sent thousands of peasants off to be killed by the Mongols. But now his wife was the empress of the Byzantine Empire, so it all worked out rather nicely.
Gabrielia and Sudislav were one of the power couples of the middle ages. Contemporary sources called them “the Orthodox Monarchs”. Sudislav readily agreed to intervene against the Modenian League’s revolt.
The war had already more or less been won after the loyalist victory at Bobbio, though, so she was able to conclude a white peace with Bérard before the Kievans could arrive in the empire. She likely could have kept fighting for better terms, but she was anxious to restore unambiguous imperial authority to Rome before the Pope successfully sniped it.
With the empire enjoying an uneasy peace, she decided it was time for a fun vacation and went on the traditional Komnenos pilgrimage. She decided she’d swing by Jerusalem, though, in honor of her sister’s conquests.
Or, you know, the big pile of rubble known as “Jerusalem” after it had been pretty much destroyed after dozens of crusades, jihads, holy wars, massacres, etc.
Sudislav was all like, hey, since we totally helped you with your civil war, you should help us mop up what’s left of Novgorod. Gabrielia was all like, fine, but I’m still packing my bags.
Hypatia di Pistoia was appointed regent during the empress’s absence.
She provided the, er, moral support Kiev needed to defeat Novgorod, and the war ended before Gabriele was back in Constantinople.
The Black Chamber, which had kind of been on the outs since the reign of Trajan II, started to enjoy imperial favor again.
Meanwhile, she sent her ecclesiarch to try to teach the pagan Mongols to stop worrying and venerate a bunch of dead sainted emperors. You know, like civilized people do.
The Old Roman/Milvian coalition continued to dominate the Senate– well, for now, anyway. The sticking point was Italy. She still had a mandate from the Senate to finish the conquest of Italy, but the Pope in Orbetello represented a nearly insurmountable roadblock to claiming the duchy of Latium, what with his ability to wave his little Pope hands and conjure up 100,000 fanatical Catholic mercenaries with nothing to lose.
The other problem was that the nobles of Italy were, like, not really super huge fans of being part of the Byzantine Empire? Of particular concern was that the de Toulouse family— who’d ruled the Kingdom of Sicily back when it was independent– had managed to reclaim their crown, and Gundrun de Toulouse established herself as the vassal queen of Sicily. And she totally hated Gabrielia, like, a lot. Trajan II was probably spinning in his grave, since, like, he spent half his reign trying to destroy all vestiges of the old Sicilian Kingdom and create a nice orderly system of themes directly responsible to Constantinople. And now not only was all that undone, but the de Toulouses were back.
Gabrielia made the best of it, foisting various shitty doukes she didn’t like onto the de Toulouses. This simultaneously improved the queen’s opinion of her empress, and meant that instead of having to placate a whole bunch of greedy vassal, she only had to placade one greedy vassal. But it was a far cry from the highly organized theme system of Trajanic Italy.
Theological debates between Catholics and Orthodox continued to rage throughout the halls of power in the empire. Meanwhile, in the rest of Europe, Catholics were being persecuted out of existence all over the place. Wow, thanks a lot, St. Valeria???
The empire seemed to be enjoying a period of stability after the rolling crises of the later years of Valeria II’s reign, and the civil wars of Valeria III’s. But there was a kind of foreboding in contemporary literature, a gloominess in art that you didn’t really see in things they were making during the Komnenian Golden Age. There was a growing sense that the good times were coming to an end.
Some members of the royal family started trying to find escape routes from public life. Gabrielia was all like, nuh uh, you take off that nun’s habit and put your shiny crown back on right now, young lady.
Medieval Catholicism was plagued by heresies, but with Orthodoxy assuming the position of leadership in Christendom, many sects started targeting that church instead. Gabrielia dealt with these heretics harshly.
Sudislav was all like, hey, Gabby, want to go beat up some pagans? And then Gabrielia was all like, sure, your place or mine?
And so the Orthodox Monarchs marched off to war together.
Off to the east, the Seljuks made yet another desperate stab for relevance by trying to overthrow the Gauhar Ayin Empire.
It did not go very well for them.
Especially when the Ilkhanate entered the war on the Gauhar Ayin side.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have Mongol coreligionist allies? Unfortunately, that wasn’t really going to happen with the Golden Horde.
At least Kiev and Byzantium managed to defeat mighty pagan Karelia, anyway.
With that taken care of, Gabrielia turned back to her little pet project in Italy. She knew she couldn’t hope to beat the Pope, but she could at least push around Pisa, the other remaining Catholic power in Italy.
It was a bit of a gamble— if the Papal State decided to intervene on Pisa’s behalf, Byzantium and Kiev were probably boned. Fortunately, although a few kingdoms came to Pisa’s aid– most notably Croatia– Orbetello remained silent.
While Pisa was unable to put up much military resistance, the war effort did put a strain on the empire’s pocketbooks, and it had to once again go into debt to keep the armies paid.
Finally, in 1347, the Doge surrendered.
This actually helped out Gabrielia in a bunch of ways. Like, it was nice enough to kick around the Catholics without that stupid stinky Pope getting in the way and get a bunch of new territory– but it also meant that there was now a land connection between Lombardy and the rest of Byzantine Italy, hopefully making Lombardy less of an isolated enclave of treasonous rebels. Hopefully.
She then organized her new territory into the theme of Tuscany.
Instead of passing this off to a doux, though, she decided she’d rule it personally, giving the throne a direct presence in Italy— and, with any luck, a foothold the next time there was a big, stupid, pointless civil war. Instead, she gave up the theme of Thessalonika, passing it to a loyal noblewoman.
This was probably not a terrific idea, since Thessalonika had been built up by centuries of Komnenos building projects, while Tuscany was a recently conquered smoking wreck of a theme. But Gabrielia was pretty pleased with herself.
Now that Sudislav had helped Gabrielia conquer Tuscany, the baton was handed off and Gabrielia went off to go help Sudislav conquer Podlasie. It’d be kind of romantic if all these wars didn’t kill thousands of people… I guess?
Lithuania, which had long been die-hard Baltic pagan holdouts, had by this time converted to Orthodoxy. But the Orthodox Monarchs decided to beat them up for their lunch money anyway.
Meanwhile, the Pope had apparently beaten the entire kingdom of France in a Holy War. Yiiikes, dudes.
Gabrielia wasn’t having any of that, no siree. So the Black Chamber totally killed Celestine III. This didn’t really solve anything, since the next Pope still had the nearly limitless wealth that enabled the Papal State to be one of the most potent military forces in the entire world, but it probably made Gabrielia feel better.
Hot on the heels (well, relatively speaking) of Markos Polo, some Chinese merchants decided to come see what was what on the other end of Silk Road. They were pretty jazzed about the prospect of overthrowing the Mongols who had conquered their nation. Gabrielia, remembering the defeats dealt to her empire by the Golden Horde late in her sister’s reign, perhaps allowed herself a certain degree of cautious optimism.
“Wanna go beat up Novgorod?”
“Wait, I thought it was my turn to start the war!”
“Whatever, Tuscany’s nicer than Podlasie, so I should get two.”
“Well, okay, sweetie. Let’s go kill some serfs!”
And then on her way up to Novgorod Gabrielia found some nerd and dumped her books, probably.
Then she persecuted some heretics and did a kickflip on her skateboard.
She also realized that she really should try building some infrastructure in Tuscany, now that she had made it the second most important part of her demesne, second only to Thrace.
Gabrielia wasn’t anywhere near the sort of general St. Valeria was, but she was a strong believer in faking it ’til you make it, so she personally led her army through Kiev to besiege the rump Novgorod kingdom.
It was probably… good practice? Or something?
And then when she got home she yelled at her daughter and killed a baby, I guess.
“That last war was pretty fun! What’ve you get next, Sudislav?”
“Estonia?”
“I’ll pack my favorite peasant killing sword and see you there!”
I’m probably being a bit too flip about Byzantine helping Kiev out with all these random wars of conquest. Gabrielia and Sudislav’s son was the heir to both Byzantium and Kiev, so– from Gabrielia’s perspective, anyway– this was all for the long-term benefit of her empire.
Which is debatable, in hindsight. But I guess when you’ve (probably, maybe) murdered your way to the top of the line of succession, you’d like to think you’re doing the right thing when you’re empress.
Meanwhile, France decided that the assassination of Celestine III meant that they might have another shot at conquering Latium.
This was a very bad plan, and all of France’s dudes got killed. RIP in pieces, France.
Gabrielia’s plan to hang onto Italy by prioritizing keeping the Despot of Sicily happy turned out to be a reasonably better plan, since discontent Italian nobles decided to take out their aggression on the despot, rather than the empress.
On March 14th, 1355, Tsar Sudislav died, and Gabrielia’s son Yaroslav inherited the throne of Kiev. This meant that the joint heir would spend several years as the Tsar of Kiev before he inherited the Byzantine Empire.
This is very important to keep in mind moving forward. So, like, make a note of that, okay?
Gabrielia’s main ambition in life was to make a mark on history comparable to that of her sister Valeria. She wanted to leave a mark on posterity so that people would point to her and say, “Yes, that’s what Empress Gabrielia did, that’s the accomplishment she was known for.”
And now we call her Gabrielia the Cruel. So, it worked, I guess?
She decided she had one more bullshit war of expansion in her before she closed her eyes and became one with the Force history, though. So, okay, this is a bit convoluted. Remember the Bulgarian Empire? Remember how after Iouliana the Great destroyed their military, Byzantium and Croatia were pretty much racing to eat as much of Bulgaria as possible? Remember how Croatia’s Bulgarian conquests left a big ugly jaggy on the Byzantine border?
Since the loss of most of the Adriatic during the run-up to Byzantium’s war for Venice, Croatia had been, like super unstable, with feuding monarchs variously claiming the title of Croatia, Serbia, and even (occasionally) Bulgaria (!). And, within this Croatia/Serbia/Bulgaria thing, there was a duchy of Bulgaria. And all of that is separate from New Bulgaria, which is what the Bulgarian Band decided to call it when they killed like half of Genoa because their paychecks bounced.
Anyway, Gabrielia decided that, since she was getting old, her final mark on posterity would be a more attractive northern border.
“Sure, I’ll help you conquer Bulgaria, Mom! When do I start?”
“Oh, Yaroslav…”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s just that your father and I always used to do this together. 
”
It was not a very long war.
That just about wraps it up for the Hashshahshin, I guess.
In recognition of her fine work in not revolting against the empire, Queen Basillike of Sicily was given the title of Caesar.
She also blew up the Pope, just for old time’s sake.
This would be her last act as Empress, because in the December of 1357, the old empress died in her sleep.
The unbroken line of Komnenos emperors and empresses who had ruled since 1081 had ended.
Assassination Scorecard:
Tsars Killed: 2
Badshahs Killed: 2
Sultans Killed: 7
Nosy Chancellors Killed: 2
Katepanos Killed: 1
Mad Bishops Killed: 1
Adventurers Killed: 1
Popes Killed: 2
Battle Scorecard
Badshahs Killed: 1
Sultans Killed: 1
Katepanos Killed: 1
That guy who killed our genius heir: 1
World Map, 1357 (Before the death of Gabrielia the Cruel and the beginning of the Union of Kiev-Byzantium)
Amnistar posted:
And now we see why loyalty to a specific family is not enough to maintain the Empire. Though the name of our ruler has changed, the empire lives on, and we shall maintain it, regardless of the cost.
Of course, if the Komnenos wish to be placed in power again…simply support the Black Chamber in the Senate, and we will ensure that the heir to the throne bears that name.
Here follows like ten other Senators claiming to be members of the Black Chamber, which is a Bad Idea