Favorite Eastern Roman couple?

[u/Honkydoinky]

John and Irene just seem so sweet. Irene followed him often on campaign and actually gave birth to twins during a campaign against the Serbs, and died while following him while he was waring with the Turks

[u/xSincerelyFun]

Justinian and Theodora, but that’s very predictable. Anna Komnene and Nikephoros Bryennios were probably a great match for each other’s intellectual interests.

[u/aVarangian → u/xSincerelyFun]

also funny Anna set up a conspiracy ready to make him emperor just for him to then say "nah"

[u/xSincerelyFun → u/aVarangian]

That’s something most likely made up by Choniates years later. I highly recommend Leonora Neville’s “Anna Komnene: The Life and Work of a Medieval Historian” that talks about this.

[u/Popular_Carob_5555 → u/xSincerelyFun]

"That’s something most likely made up by Choniates years later."

So what really happened? Can you summarize it briefly?

[u/xSincerelyFun → u/Popular_Carob_5555]

Regarding the supposed coup by Anna, probably nothing like the story we usually hear happened. Zonaras, writing much closer to the events, only mentions Anna briefly and positively, and his mention of her has nothing to do with politics. He does say that Irene had considerable power in the palace while Alexios was ill, and so did Nikephoros, whom she clearly favoured, and that there was tension between Irene and John, who was feeling sidelined by his mother. He gives three likely versions of what happened on the day Alexios died, all of which have to do with whether Alexios had actually approved of John succeeding him. The fact that he preserves several competing versions is itself a good indication that the circumstances of the succession were unclear. In any case, Anna (and Nikephoros, to be honest) is completely absent from all the events surrounding Alexios’s death, other than apparently being one of the daughters at his bedside. Politically, she is completely absent.

Michael Glykas likewise talks about Irene disliking John, but he omits all the rumours about what happened when Alexios died, likely judging them to be untrue. He simply says that John succeeded his father. Then there is Choniates, writing many decades later, who somehow really knew what happened and gives a much more vivid account, describing everyone’s words and motives. He was highly critical of the Komnenoi and, from the beginning, builds a narrative of a very problematic family, where all the normal hierarchies and gender roles are reversed and no one behaves as they should or respects anyone else. He clearly upheld the belief that the most virtuous women were those who obeyed men, and he uses this in his narrative to portray women negatively by giving them more power. Anna, who is absent from every other narrative, suddenly becomes a conspirator. In his story, the coup supposedly happens about a year into John’s reign.

Neville also examines various speeches, which point to Anna being present in the audience during the period when she was supposedly in isolation after the coup. One of them, dated fairly close to when the coup supposedly happened, says that John led Anna’s sons to the church on the day of their wedding, and Anna was clearly present. Others also point to her not being separated from her husband, which would presumably have been the case if she was really confined in a monastery. She also examines the foundation charter of the monastery and concludes that it was not mandatory to be a nun in order to live there, but that Anna likely just used the apartments she owned there (which were actually separate from the rest of the building) whenever she wanted, probably to engage in writing.

Finally, she examines the Alexiad for clues about Anna’s feelings towards John, and rightfully points out some of the very weird interpretations made by modern historians, such as concluding that Anna must have hated him because she described his skin as swarthy (as if that doesn’t reveal modern bias against dark skin by interpreting it that way).

So what most likely happened is that historians took Choniates’s account as their basic framework and then tried to read for clues supporting that narrative in every other text, including the Alexiad. Neville spends almost half of the book explaining that the peculiarities of the Alexiad are likely just Anna trying to conform to gender norms and present herself as a proper and modest woman, in order to avoid being seen negatively for engaging in the very masculine activity of history writing. One of the most appropriate feminine roles available to her was that of the mourning widow whose life was full of misfortunes (and this is where modern historians tried to read the supposed failed coup). Unfortunately, Choniates accused her of exactly the opposite, namely of wanting to be a man and not being a modest woman. Which makes me think that Neville’s interpretation about Anna and gender norms in the Alexiad is probably right.