About this ebook
Not hidden away in a villa. Not tucked into comfortable obscurity. Maria Skleraina walked the marble corridors of power beside Empress Zoe herself, received ambassadors, attended ceremonies, and sat at the table of empire. The scandal rocked Constantinople to its foundations - yet somehow, impossibly, it worked. For thirteen years, the most powerful throne in Christendom was shared by three people in history's strangest love triangle.
This is the untold story of the emperor who chose passion over protocol, love over legitimacy, and personal happiness over political survival - and nearly destroyed an empire in the process.
In this gripping biography, discover:
How a charming boulevardier in exile became emperor at age 50 by marrying a 64-year-old empress - then shocked the Christian world by refusing to give up his mistress
The astonishing domestic arrangement that defied every rule of Byzantine court life: one emperor, two women, and a household that somehow functioned despite violating centuries of tradition
Why Constantine's devotion to Maria Skleraina - the aristocrat who refused to be hidden - reveals both his greatest strength and his fatal weakness as a ruler
The catastrophic price the empire paid when an emperor valued culture over conquest, pleasure over duty, and spent a fortune building churches while barbarians gathered at every gate
How Constantine presided over the Great Schism of 1054 that split Christianity forever - because theological disputes bored him more than dinner parties
The contrast between Basil II's iron-willed military genius and his successor's spectacular neglect that unraveled sixty years of Byzantine greatness in just thirteen
What happens when absolute power falls into the hands of a man who wants only to live comfortably, love openly, and avoid the responsibilities that come with wearing the purple
Julius Roman brings the Byzantine court to vivid life with the narrative flair of Robert Harris and the historical insight of Tom Holland. Drawing on Michael Psellos's eyewitness Chronographia and contemporary Byzantine sources, Roman reconstructs the extraordinary reign of an emperor who refused to play by the rules - and reveals why his personal authenticity became political catastrophe.
