Rome AARisen - a Byzantine AAR

Megaskatas maybe, if he tries to compare himself to the Megas? :rofl:

As for my Greek, I do not know Greek. I know how to troll the internet for translations, and how t fake like I know Greek from there. Many of the Greek proverbs, etc. I've posted come from wikiquote's list of Greek proverbs. Beyond that, many of the titles, etc. herein are based on real Byzantine ones, only modified by the classic real-life Komnenid tactic of slapping a prefix in front of the title to make something higher and more important sounding. Pandomestikos or Hyperdomestikos or Vestarches Domestikos, instead of domestikos, etc...

The wait's over! Enjoy!



February 1st, 1262

“Konstantinopolis…is…dangerous…”

Safiya Komnenos-Hohenstaufen sighed, fingers rummaging through a chest filled with old dresses despite the nagging of a certain person. Safiya had plenty of dresses of her own, all fine and beautiful, but she wanted one particular dress. One infamous dress. One that was beautiful beyond anything in her own admittedly brilliant wardrobe. Something worthy of her name, her lineage, and her figure.

She was the daughter of the greatest beauty of her age and one of the most handsome men to ever see the imperial throne—and it showed. The brunette was graceful, tall but not gangly, with a face and figure that would make a sculptor jealous. With her blood and looks, she should have been the catch of the century, on the lips of every eligible noble bachelor in Christendom.

But that was not to be—in Safiya’s eyes, thanks to the woman laying in the bed behind her.

“Did…you…hear… me?” the woman rasped again. “Don’t go to Konstantinopolis…”

Safiya turned and growled at the source of those words.

Once, Frederica Hohenstaufen-Komnenos had been the beauty of Christendom, the woman that men lusted after with abandon, the Helen that brought the great Gabriel Komnenos’ dreams of empire crashing down like the gates of Troy. Her bosom was coveted by thousands and envied by thousands more, her hips seducing emperors and commoners alike.

And now, lo what those hips had wrought.

“Are you listening to me, daughter?” Frederica said again, spittle and blood making her words thick and wet. That once pretty head was too weak to rise from its velvet pillow, and her tired brown eyes stared out of a bloated, jaundiced face, bruises new and old on her cheeks and down her neck. Her face was locked in a perpetual grimace, the kiss constant, incredible pain left on her body. Frederica had craved and lusted for the attentions of all her admirers, and now, that attention had finally borne its fruit.


Safiya snorted, then went back to looking through her mother’s trunk. Servants were already on their way to fetch the churigeons yet again—Safiya wanted to try on her mother’s infamous maroon evening dress before they arrived and her chance was lost in the commotion. Even if Frederica had not been dying from some carnal illness, there was no way the sickly form under those covers would ever wear one of these dresses again. Why let them go to waste, when Safiya’s figure was nearly perfect for them? After all, if she was to perform the role her father and half-brother’s imagined for her in Konstantinopolis…

“Why do you not listen?” her mother rasped.

“Why should I?” Safiya growled, freely letting annoyance slip into her voice. “Why should the words of an old wreck guide me?” There it was! Eagerly, Safiya hefted it out of the chest, and sighed—despite being over twenty years old, it had been meticulously cared for. The silk was still soft, its colors still bold and true. Yes…this would do nicely.

“You sadden me…” Safiya heard her mother say.

Safiya gritted her teeth.

“Why do you treat your mother so?”

“I have no mother,” Safiya retorted, lip curling into a sneer even though her back was to the bedridden woman. She closed her eyes, trying to hold back the anger. Focus! Son’t let her ruin things yet again! The dress looked like it would fit, perhaps a little tailoring…

“You…you disrespectful little…”

“You are no mother to me!” Safiya spun around, careful to not let that precious relic drop fo the floor. “You have never been a mother to me!” When Frederica started to open her mouth again, Safiya shouted her down. “You were always too busy whoring around to care about me! Your mind was set on this servant or that maid, and never on your own damn daughter! Only father cared about me!”

“Don’t…”

“Don’t you dare say its not true!” Safiya shouted. She felt her face heat, the tears welling in her eyes once more—and it made her hate that bedridden woman even more than the years of pain she’d caused! “You’re just mad you can’t stop me!”

“You’re… going down the wrong… path…” Frederica wheezed, bloody spittle oozing out of the side of her mouth. “The Komnenids…they will eat…you…”

“I am a Komnenos!” Safiya snapped, lurching over to her mother’s bedside. Her hands trembled, a tear freely running down her cheek. She cursed, rubbing the thing away. No, she wouldn’t cry, not now! “I might be your flesh and blood, but I won’t be a fool like you, sleeping with everything in sight!”

At least, not openly, her mind added. In any other circumstance, the idea would have brought a smile to Safiya’s lips. But not here. Not now.

“Father thinks I am the key to breaking down that German’s hold on the Empire!” Safiya roared on as the shouts of servants echoed from the hallway. The churigeons and their retinue were drawing close. “The man that you let take the diadem from father, and strip you of your honor.” Her lips went up into a cruel sneer as she drew next to the dying woman’s bedside. “What little of that was left…”

“Soon…you…will…have…none…too…” Frederica rasped, wincing the entire time.

Without thinking, Safiya did something she’d been wanting to do since she realized how much her mother valued a good lay over her own flesh and blood.

She slapped her.

And it felt good.

“How dare you try to tell me what to do!” Safiya shouted as a fresh ugly bruise started to form on her mother’s jaundiced face. “No one cares about you anymore! You’re a used up old hag! Really? You shouldn’t have slept with everyone that moved?” Safiya’s eyebrow arched up. “Really? You shouldn’t have forsaken your husband?” The girl rolled her eyes. “Of course, momma, you shouldn’t have, but you did, and now I’m here,” she yelled, years of anger at the whispers, the gossip, flooding out of her, “stuck being the bastard in your shadow! Well guess what, mother!”

“No more!” Safiya stamped her foot for emphasis. Her rage was so hot she hardly noticed Frederica was not looking at her anymore, or anyone else. “I’m going to carve my own path! My own destiny!” she snorted, then turned away from her mother’s pallid, still form. “And it won’t include you!”

As the churigeon’s began to fill the room and worried words went around, Safiya hefted the dead woman’s dress higher and smiled.

Yes, it’d fit nicely.

“It’s my turn to shine,” she said over the death rattles of her mother.


February 21st, 1262

“I know what you’re up to, boy.”

Albrecht von Franken was perhaps the only man who could stride confidently into the sleeping chambers of the Emperor of the Romans and wake the Vice Gerent of Christ from a slumber. Anyone else would have found their head on a pike. Von Franken instead smiled thinly as he heard the noise of his stepson bolting upright behind the tyrian purple curtains that separated the sleeping emperor from other, mere mortal men. Albrecht gently closed the door behind him as his stepson yanked the curtains wide.

“Hello, Father,” the boy said, stretching his arms. Albrecht’s smile grew thinner at Andronikos’ attempt to pretend he’d casually arisen from slumber, not bolted upright in a cold sweat.

“Hello, son,” Albrecht dragged out the final word just as Andronikos had dragged the unwilling ‘father’ from his unfilial lips. “How are you this night?” the Megoskyriomachos said, slowly walking towards the imperial bedside.

“Quite well,” Andronikos replied. His stepson still smiled at him, eyes fixed pleasant—but Albrecht knew. Oh, he knew. Behind those warm orbs, he was sure the boy was cursing him and praying for his doom to come sooner rather than later.

Such ingratitude.

“I am sorry to disturb you,” Albrecht said, voice cold and formal as he let the false smile disappear from his face, “but a dispatch has come from Spain with most urgent news.”

“It cannot wait until a full meeting of the Council?” Andronikos asked, still stretching. Albrecht read clearly the young man’s meaning—his discomfort only made Albrecht feel more secure in what he was about to read.

“No,” von Franken said, allowing his voice to be suitably grim. “As Your Majesty knows, Prince-Duke Guillaume de Normandie was left by Exarchos Bartholomaios in command of the loyalist forces of the north, some 20,000 men. “It appears,” Albrecht let his face grow even darker, grimmer, despite the fact he felt like dancing a jig, “that Duke Guillaume was trapped by the army of Segeo Komnenos in the hills outside of Zaragoza. According to dispatches…” Albrecht said, producing said parchment from the folds of his robes.

“Where did you get that?” the boy asked, the smile completely gone now. His face was still calm, impassive, but his eyes—they told of worry, of fear. Andronikos reached, but Albrecht merely held the note higher, reading more.

“Fortunately, Chillarchos Godwinson led the majority of the Duke’s forces to Lustania, where they fight on,” Albrecht went on, “However, Duke Guillaume himself was captured, along with most of his household.”

“Captured?” Andronikos asked, the slightest arc in his voice the only audible signal of the worry Albrecht knew was galloping through the young man’s head.

“Yes. As he was completely in Segeo’s hands, he was forced to seek terms,” the Megoskyriomachos went on,” including not just surrender, but swearing an oath of fealty to ‘Emperor’ Sergios I.” Albrecht then held the parchment out—Andronikos snatched from his hand, all pretense of calmness gone. Von Franken watched as his stepson hurriedly scanned the document, eyes growing wider.


“I bring this to Your attention, because, as her father has publicly sided with a known rebel against Your Imperial Majesty, it would be unseemly for Lady Cecilia de Normandie to remain at court,” Albrecht put his hands behind his back, rocking on his heels in mock gravity. “Your Majesty cannot afford the scandal, and the law is simple and frank on this regard…”

“Cecilia’s… banished?” Andronikos looked up from the note. Those blue eyes were frank now, open, full of worry and fear. Albrecht resisted the urge to smile—he’d broken through the boy’s walls. Instead, he let him only nod firmly.

“And as her father is now a known rebel, she has become ineligible for Your Majesty’s hand…”

As soon as those words left his lips, Albrecht could see the change in Andronikos’ eyes. One second, they were worried, almost panicked, the next, his eyes had flicked down, his mind working, calculating. Another second later, they came back up, staring into Albrecht’s own—cold and blue, featureless, hard, save a question left unspoken.

Albrecht finally let a thin smile come through—the boy was quick. Albrecht said nothing—he’d let the boy figure out what’d happened. Eleutherios was good at more than just murder. He could also slip important messages to even Romanion’s enemies, without then knowing where the hint came from. Not that Guillaume de Normandie had been an especially difficult man to trap—he was a known cad and coward, and openly rode away from his army because he was afraid of being drawn into battle.


The boy said nothing, only nodding slightly even as his eyes stared at his stepfather’s. He’d already pieced things together. Von Franken sighed—if the boy didn’t hate him before, he surely hated him now. But hate at his age, like any other emotion, could pass with time. Marriage, especially marriages in the name of diplomacy, lasted far longer.

“Now, will you surrender yourself to my counsel,” Albrecht raised an eyebrow, “and good common sense,” and agree to the betrothal with Safiya?”

The boy said nothing, just a single lone nod. Albrecht didn’t smile in triumph—it’d be unseemly. There was no reason to rub the boy’s face in his defeat—it’d just engender more distrust where trust had already been broken.

“Good,” von Franken said. “I’ve already taken the liberty of notifying the Patriarch, and,” he faked a glance out towards the window, as if looking for the location of the sun during its daily arc, “newsreaders are already through the city. It will be on everyone’s lips by noon tomorrow.”

For a brief moment, he saw Andronikos’ eyes flare as the jaws of von Franken’s trap snapped shut. The boy was boxed in fully—with the news on the lips of everyone from the lowest prole to the highest prelate or dynatos, it would be nightmarish for Andronikos to back out of the arrangement. A lesser man would have erupted—he would have snarled, he would have snapped, he would have spit, called Albrecht a whoreson at the least, and every greater oaths. But Andronikos’ face remained calm, quiet, the slight tic in his eye, the tiny tremble at the corner of his mouth the only hints at the rage, the fury the tempest, that was raging behind those cool blue eyes. In another circumstance, Albrecht would’ve been immensely pleased with his stepson—hiding white hot anger was the mark of a calm, collected man, not a uproarious boy.

Today, though, he took it as a sign of victory in this battle—and, he hoped, a sign that the war would end before any more needed to be fought.

“You thought you were clever?” Albrecht asked quietly. “Your plan wasn’t. Using the army was obvious, and now you’re trapped into doing something I asked you to do willingly for the sake of your throne and your Empire.” Albreht’s thin smile somehow grew even shallower. “As the late Emperor Manuel once said, do not play chess with a master unless you are a master yourself.”

“And what of when the pupil becomes the master?” the Emperor finally spoke again, his tone conversational, pleasant even, as he folded his hands in front of him. His eyes flashed, and for a moment Albrecht could see the white hot flame beneath before that iron wall descended once more. All the rest of the world could see was his eyes blinking quickly, and the left corner of his mouth twisting upwards—the snarl suppressed with all the young man’s willpower.

“When that day comes, I still have won,” Albrecht smiled thinly. “I pray that it comes before my death, else we all will have lost,” the Megoskyriomachos bowed stiffly to his son.

“Oh, believe me,” the boy said, voice still save the ever-slightest crack, “that day is thundering upon you.” Slowly the Emperor rose—a rustling as bedsheets slipped aside. Quietly, the boy motioned for Albrecht to come closer—the Megoskyriomachos obliged.

“And when that day comes…” the boy leaned close and whispered, venom and hate finally slipping into the voice no one else could hear. For a second, Andronikos’ mouth hung open, as more words, more anger threatened to come out in whispers, but only that slight tremble spoke of his true feelings. Finally, after second seconds of silence, the young man waved his stepfather out as he started to shake.

Albrecht bowed, turned, and left. Just before the door closed, he thought he heard a sniffle coming from the room.


February 24th, 1262

Two men walked in the wintry streets of a Konstantinopolis night.

One walked with the air and grace of a noble, despite the lowly cloak that shrouded his form. His cloak and cowl were close-fitting, cleverly hiding the fine tunic underneath. Only the occasional glimpse of a ruby ring gave away his status as a noble.

The other walked with the gait of a man who had been everyone—the tread of a noble, the amble of the commons, melded into one smooth step as he purposefully strode towards his destination. To most eyes he would have looked to be a merchant this night, but those who knew him intimately knew he was nothing less than a professional charlatan, a man skilled at looking nondescript. A spy and an informant, a watcher and a messenger, a harbinger and a vulture—he was all these things in one flesh.

It was more than chance that led them to meet. In fact, the noble tapped the spy on the shoulder, and whispered his true name in his ear. There was surprise—how did the noble know him? Only his master was supposed to know him! The spy thought about killing the interloper, but instead his curiosity got to him. He could kill him later. How did the noble know his name?

The spy asked the question—the noble answered confidently. The spy frowned, and motioned for the two to head towards a side alley. The conversation continued. The noble made a proposal. The spy was even more puzzled. Questions abounded. The noble answered, calmly, quietly, much to the surprise of the spy. More questions, more answers, and assurances. Safe conduct was promised, as was gold, as were secure means to the ends.

Bejeweled hands passed a vial into those calloused fingers, then the muffled clink of coin twinkled lightly in the air as gold glinted momentarily in the moonlight.

An offer. A promise. Expediency was a must, the timing had to be perfect.

The spy nodded. With what the noble promised, he could not say no and be true to his mission at hand. His eyes spoke of questions, the noble’s mouth spoke a few last quiet assurances.

It would work.

Do not worry.

Your master will be pleased.

The spy nodded. Yes, he would be.

Without another word, the two figures passed each other—shadows drifting by in the murk of that winter’s night, each on their way to change history...


So there you have an intro to Safiya, and Albie has stifled his stepson’s plans. But who are the two people in the final vignette? And what of the vast ongoing imperial campaigns? More to come when Rome AARisen continues!