The Familial, the Foreign, and the Forgiven: How to plot against the emperor in twelfth century Romanía and how to get away with it

This thesis examines political troublemaking in the medieval Roman Empire during the Komnenian period (1081–1183 CE), arguing that the nature and tactics of domestic opposition underwent a fundamental transformation across this century, reflecting a broader consolidation of dynastic power by the Komnenian family. Drawing on a prosopographical methodology and engaging critically with primary sources such as the domestic chronicles of Niketas Choniates, Anna Komnene's Alexiad, and Ioannes Kinnamos, as well as the external accounts of Michael the Syrian and William of Tyre, this study traces how political opposition evolved from aristocratic resistance to dynastic infighting as the Komnenoi progressively subsumed the Roman state into their family patrimony. This study includes three principal arguments structured around the categories of the familial, the foreign, and the forgiven. First, it contends that the Komnenian period does not represent the triumph of the aristocracy as a class, as scholars such as Kazhdan and Epstein have argued, but rather the entrenchment of a single imperial family at the expense of precisely that same aristocratic class. The case of Nikephoros Diogenes illustrates how the aristocracy resisted this process, while the 1181 conflict between Maria Komnene and Alexios the protosebastos exemplifies its culmination. Second, the study demonstrates how the changed diplomatic landscape of the twelfth century encouraged troublemakers such as Isaakios the sebastokrator and his son Andronikos Komnenos to seek foreign support against Constantinople, a pattern with lasting consequences that foreshadow the catastrophe of the Fourth Crusade. Third, and finally, the thesis explains the frequency with which these troublemakers were pardoned, arguing that cultural norms surrounding aristocratic kinship, the reputational imperatives of imperial clemency, and the occasional non-seriousness of alleged plots—such as in the cases of Anna Komnene and Ioannes Komnenos—all contributed to a political culture during the Komnenian period that scorned punishment in favor of ritualized reconciliation.