And here is the
actual update! Enjoy!
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”Rumors can be as dangerous as swords. Guard against them as you would guard against an assassin.” – attributed to Emperor Nikolaios Komnenos
March 17th, 1120
“…as dangerous as swords. Guard against them as you would guard against an assassin. Should some part of your personal life come to the fore, the interests of the state must come first.”
Nikolaios stopped the scratching of his quill and went into thought. A brief mental argument ensued, before he decided ‘must’ was a better word than ‘always.’ ‘Must’ implied an obligation, a duty, something he wanted to convey to whatever future Emperors read his writings. It was only a minor treatise, nothing compared to Konstantinos Porphyregenitos’ massive works on the state government.
Yet as he was about to start again, he felt another presence in the room. He was in a writing mood – his ideas were flowing from his mind to the paper like an endless stream, and he didn’t want to stop. Yet he did, looking up to see his friend and lover standing in the doorway to the chambers.
Ioannis had not changed much in ten years. He was still tall, strong and fair like his increasingly aged father. Now a
strategos in his own right, he commanded the second
tagma of the
Hetaratoi of the Imperial Guard. Loved by his men and feared by the enemies of Romanion, he cut a dashing and imposing figure in his bright red cloak and rich clothes. Everyone knowing that his favorite sword had been reforged four times to repair battle damage in the last ten years also lent an air of fearsomeness to his reputation.
Nikolaios, though, had changed. He was only twenty-eight, yet by his face it looked as if he was ten years older. By day he ran the everyday business of the Empire in far more detail than his father had even done. Every imperial appointment went through his hands, and he exhaustively looked at candidates. Every proposal for a public work, every idea to expand or make the military more efficient, he looked at all of them, in addition to attending Imperial Council meetings and handling foreign diplomacy.
Added to this were the problems of finding a wife for his father. There had been many attempts to arrange a marriage for the Emperor, but all had fallen through, for one reason or another. The first attempt, to the daughter of the King of the Franks, failed when she died of measles on the way to Konstantinopolis. The second, to the daughter of the
comes of Ankyra, failed when she arrived in court and looked more like a barnyard creature than the beauty her father claimed she was. The resulting bad feelings from that boiled over in 1116 into a war, where the Emperor claimed Ankyra as his own.
One should not lie to an Emperor looking for an attractive Empress…
The further attempt in 1117, came to failure when the poor girl, a child of one of the Norman Crusader princes in Egypt, drowned in a storm. Nikolaios had one last attempt in mind – and its embassy would be arriving in Konstantinopolis on the morrow.
Added to all this stress were his projects at night – when Demetrios would be visiting his lady of most recent interest or otherwise relaxing, Nikolaios was hard at work, writing treatises on governance for future rulers, compiling advice from his father on military matters, diplomatic correspondence, intelligence information, and a slew of other papers. Even when he wasn’t working on those, there was always the stress of hiding his relationship with Ioannis, and dealing with his increasingly jaded, and cheating wife.
And it all showed.
“Nik?” Ioannis asked again, the candlelight making shadows dance across his face. Nikolaios frowned, and the scritch of his pen stopped after the words,
”A ruler must not – can not – let his personal life interfere…”
“What?” Nikolaios grumbled without intending to do so. The day had been long – the new
comes of Ankyra had wanted monies for rebuilding some of the destroyed infrastructure, the Prince of Slavonia had come to the city to pay his respects, and an ambassador from the pope had once again come to the Imperial city, demanding the royal lines denounce iconoclasm, follow the true faith, and recognize Papal claims in the central and southern portions of Italy. There were also arrangements that needed to be made for the visit from the representatives of the Western Emperor on the morrow.
Add to that he knew his wife was hiding something from him that was more damning than simply cheating and that he hadn’t finished the chapter he wanted to get to tonight, and Nikolaios was quite cranky.
Ioannis reacted like he always did – touchy. “Okay, I won’t say what I was going to say,” the general complained.
Nikolaios gave a grunt, sighed, and turned around. “What is it?” This did not have the intended effect either. Indeed, it seemed for several months things had been this way – formal, tense, without their former close camaraderie.
Ioannis gave a semi-pained look, but cleared his throat and went on. “I’ve personally seen to the arrangements for security tomorrow. We shouldn’t have any problems. If we do, those problems will have a sword in their belly very quickly.” The
strategos then bowed rather stiffly, and started to leave.
“Wait,” Nikolaios called. It was obvious something was bothering Ioannis – like when they were younger, Thrakesios was horrible at covering his emotions.
“What is it?” Ioannis replied, in perfect imitation of Nikolaios’ pitch and voice from moments before.
“I did not intend for my speech to sound that way,” Nikolaios said quietly, hoping the concession would stop the fight he saw on the horizon. Ioannis’ face merely grew sadder.
“I know,” he said quietly. “I’ll go make sure that the review horses are stabled and ready.”
Part of Nikolaios screamed that he should get up, grab Ioannis and make him stay, but tiedness, lethargy, and the need to get back to work all conspired against him. He nodded, and with a swish of his cape and the click of hob-nailed boots, Thrakesios was gone.
“What has happened between us?” Nikolaios whispered to himself, looking down.
The seed does no fall from the tree…
…I am becoming my father…
He set aside the treatise for a moment, and for a change of pace, to rest his mind, he switched to examining several new reports on the city’s grain supply. They came from one of the very junior
logothetes, but that didn’t change Nikolaios’ interest. His father might have regarded grain as something dull, but Nikolaios knew a great city lived and died by its supply of that simple staple.
He flipped through the first two parchments, scrawlings from a contractor building a granary in the Blacharnae district. Then, he reached the third sheet. He stopped, blinked, and read it again. No one was there to see his face go ashen pale at the single word, written neatly in Greek on that page.
Nikolaios Komnenos - Catamite!
Nikolaios held the small, damning note in his hand for a second, before his mind went into action. It was no longer a question of if someone knew, it was a question of who and how many they had told…
The next day…
Stefan Arpad, Count of Esterzhgom and Ambassador Extraordinary from the court of Emperor Ernst, son of Kalman, blinked in astonishment for the fifth time that day.
In Pest and Aachen, the twin capitals of the Western Empire, everyone had spoken of how amazing and astonishing the city of Konstantinopolis looked. Stefan thought himself a worldly man – Pest was no tiny town, nearly 25,000 souls now lived there, and almost 30,000 in Aachen, making them true metropolises. He wore the reddish-purple tyrian-hued boots of a member of the Imperial family of the West, rode a magnificent stallion, wore robes of Chinese silk. Yet nothing could prepare him for the feast for the eyes he now beheld.
Konstantinopolis was a city of nearly
250,000, ten times the size of Pest, and the great Theodosian Walls easily eclipsed the strongest castles Stefan had seen. The Maurikian Gate, crowned with golden elephants and statues and covered in ivory tiles had been an amazing sight. As had the Augustan forum with its towering obelisk to Constantine the Great, and the Senate House, where he met with delegated members of the Roman nobility.
All of them were dressed in silks as fine as his.
Yet nothing in the West could prepare him for the central structures of the city - Hagia Sophia, greatest church in all of Christendom, the restored Hippodrome, marble statues covering her entrances and standing above the huge seating area, and finally the fully restored Great Palace, its lead roofs now traced with inlaid giltwork, its domes shining in the sun. The sheer size and power reminded Stefan that in the eyes of these Emperors, the Western Empire was a backward, puny state – immense in size, but unable to marshal a fraction of the power of the East.
Stefan was arriving in the city to discuss a move that had alarmed his nephew Ernst – the annexation of two Wallachian principalities by the Eastern Emperors – Tirgoviste and Severin. The move ended the only buffer zone that existed along the long border. The East also tended to regard the West as barbarian usurpers – and Stefan was here to find out if Demetrios and Nikolaios, co-Emperors of the West, had intentions that were friendly, or foul.
With the addition of Tirgoviste and Severin, there were now no buffer states left between East and West
There was another purpose to his visit – the woman riding next to him.
For Stefan was gifted with intelligence and wit, which he knew could persuade the younger, half-Arpad co-Emperor. But the elder Emperor Demetrios might need other forms or persuasion – some that Stefan was sure the prospect of marrying the tall, lithe Bertha von Habsbug might provide. She was from a minor noble family that had fled its lands for refuge in France, so there were no dynastic entanglements for the Romans to worry about, and Demetrios’ reputation as a womanizer was legendary.
It’d also helped that correspondence with Nikolaios had hinted that a suitably beautiful bride might go far in any potential negotiations. Stefan only hoped he could gain the ear of the co-Emperors of the East, and perhaps persuade them to let the West be, for the time being.
For Stefan had been charged with another goal – persuading Romanion to stop pontificating, and agree to a joint front against the Pope in Rome. An alliance was needed, one that Stefan thought would be difficult to achieve.
This would require the Greeks to acknowledge the Western Emperor as an equal, and not someone junior – as well as, Ernst hoped, a Greek military intervention against the Normans. Ernst would accept no alliance on any terms other than that. The Greeks had always referred to themselves as the true bearers of Roman history and culture, and viewed the Empire of Charlemagne, whom they derisively referred to as the “Latin Empire” or the “Frankish Empire,” was an upstart. Periods of brief cooperation had existed, but otherwise things were always cool between the two powers.
Additionally, since the middle of the previous century, the Greeks had not been able to hold their own against the Normans, and it was clear as much as the Normans were hated, Stefan thought they were also feared by the East. Recent Emperors, up to and including Demetrios, had a tendency to ignore the Norman problem, or even enlist Norman aid! As the Normans were the military backers of the Popes in their ongoing feud with the Western Empire, it was natural that the Western Emperors wanted the Normans corralled as well. And as powerful as the Western Emperors might be, their army did not have nearly the professionalism and strength of their Eastern counterparts.
Which was part of the reason Stefan’s son Kalman was not with them. Two nights before, Kalman and several others in the party had become drunk off of honey-wine, and Stefan’s normally reserved son had deflowered a young lady. Her father had been furious, as had Stefan, and the young man and his companions had ridden ahead to the city, to find one of the few Latin priests that remained within its walls to seek absolution.
So Stefan was immediately surprised when he saw his son galloping towards them, through the city streets.
Stefan reined up his horse at his son’s approach. The look on the young man’s face was one of disgust and abject horror.
“What is wrong at the chapel?” Stefan asked, alarmed.
“I was speaking to the priest, asking for confession,” the young man blurted out, “when the priest leaned in and told me he knew some things that might change how we thought of the Emperor…”
“What do you mean?” Stefan asked, an eyebrow raised and eyes wide, and the young man went on to explain everything he had heard.
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Later that day…
The Octagon had, since the Great Palace’s initial days, been intended as the formal reception hall of the Emperors. Just as in the days when a young Demetrios Komnenos first arrived in Konstantinopolis, the room was meant to impress, and with the recent completion of the renovation work, the room was far more impressive now than it had ever been before – from the rafters above, brand new silken banners and war trophies, won by the Megos Komnenos, hung as a solemn reminder of what happened when the military of the Empire was called to battle.
It was here that East would receive West, and the negotiations would take place.
Siddiqa, as a member of the Imperial Council, quietly watched the proceedings with more than mild interest. As Demetrios took his position on the raised throne behind the purple shroud – during diplomatic meetings he often sat there, as it allowed him the freedom to doze lightly through the more mundane parts – she carefully watched Nikolaios. To her surprise, he entered the room, back fully erect, confident as ever in this, the setting where he always came into his own
Despite herself, Siddiqa frowned. He
had to know at this point that someone knew his secret, and she had hoped he would come in to these negotiations shaken and rattled. The topics at hand this day were delicate – the boundaries of the two empires, how much mutual interference would be tolerated, as well as how to deal with the Pope and the Normans. Siddiqa also feared the woman coming from the West would interfere in Siddiqa’s plans – if she had a son, there would be no way Ignatios could stand to inherit the throne. If she could have soured negotiations from the start, perhaps the marriage might not happen.
Hence her making sure that the Latins knew the latest rumor within Konstantinopolis.
She could see the tenseness in the faces of the Latins – she’d made sure several people around them in succession had loudly mentioned the rumors, and the gullible Westerners had listened. Anyone from Romanion might have known that tactic, but the Latins did not… especially when the word came from one of the few Latin priests in the city. Each successive plant had only driven the information home.
Yet as she stood and watched, she grimaced as Nikolaios continued to bear himself as if nothing had happened, coolly and confidently conducting the negotiations as if things were perfect, and all of Romanion was at his beck and call. Her grimace turned fouler when she saw, slowly, bit by bit, the antagonism in the eyes and posture of the Latins change first to something neutral, and then to friendly stances. He’d charmed them, won them over, despite their initial misgivings of being in the same room as a rumored sodomite.
At several points it was obvious the Latins tried to involve Demetros behind the curtain, but the elder Emperor didn’t respond. It wasn’t necessarily because he supported Nikolaios’ , or that he opposed them – it was that he simply didn’t care. As soon as the prospect of marriage came up, however, she saw the figure behind the curtain stir, and she grimaced even more. The talk became brisk and even merry as the prospect of a Eastern Emperor marrying a Western noblewoman came closer and closer to fruition.
In the end, for Romanion it was a great day. The Western Empire agreed to a formal alliance with the East, to form a joint front against the Italian machinations of the Normans and the Pope in Rome. For too long the Pope had thumbed his nose at the Emperors in Aachen, using Heinrich’s embarrassment at Canossa some seventy years before to wield immense power. For too long had the Norman de Hautevilles illegally ruled the south of Italy, lands that rightfully belonged to Romanion. To seal the alliance, the clearly smitten Demetrios agreed to marry young Bertha von Habsburg, and once again the Roman Empire stood united against a common threat.
The alliance with the Western Empire is successful, making sure that Romanion’s Westen border, save for the Normans, is secure.
For Siddiqa, it was a mixed day. She had failed in one facet of her plan – the Western alliance was now a reality. However, Emperor had not married Bertha yet, let alone sired a son. She still had time – even if Nikolaios would undoubtedly spend this night rooting through his own lists of informants, trying to sift out who was spreading the rumors. She was confident she’d covered her tracks well – this time.
Yet the rumors had begun. The worst had been saved for the ears of the incoming Latins, but the rest of the court was already abuzz with talk of Jacinta’s indiscretions, as well as Nikolaios’ tolerance for the woman and the ‘inordinate’ amount of time he spent with one Ioannis Thrakesios. The time was ripe for the worst of the sins to come to the fore, and Siddiqa would, of course, shepherd this juicy gossip, always keeping tidbits in reserve to fan the flames at an appropriate moment.
As with most Masters of Spies in Romanion, Siddiqa had contacts within most external realms surrounding the Empire’s borders, and mentally, she was already drawing letters that would appear in the hands of the Pope, the King of Sicily, and the Patriarch of Konstantinopolis. She also made a note to visit privately with three of the great Princes of the Empire who she knew would help, Michael and Andronikos Dukas, cousins and Princes of Dorostotum and Thrace respectively, and the
Megos Domestikos, Christophoros Komnenos.
Michael and Andronikos Dukas, cousins who are, you guessed it, cousins of the deposed Emperor Michael VII. Rich and powerful, they have just a small gripe against the Komnenids…
She would need allies. The marriage between Bertha and Demetrios could not go forward, and Nikolaios had to be removed from power. There was no other way to ensure her son would rule in the Queen of Cities, now that the first blows of a probable court war had been struck.
Officially, Bertha was a ward of the King of the Franks, but as enough ‘persuasion’ was offered by Empeor Ernst, it was agreed that the Western Emperor could hand her in marriage to Demetrios.
