Eparkhos
Well-known member
I.
Nikolaos I is unique among Byzantine usurpers in that he had no interest in either the throne or power, both of which were thrust upon him entirely against his will; perhaps that is why he was a good emperor.By the dawn of the 13th century, the Byzantine Empire was in precipitous decline. The prosperity and expansion of the Komnenian dynasty had collapsed alongside the family, the entirely unqualified Angeloi dynasty rising to take their place. Isaakios II had (mis-)ruled for a decade before being overthrown, tortured and blinded by his own brother, Alexios III, who took the throne and proceeded to do much as his brother had. Over nearly twenty years of rule between the brothers Angeloi, the Byzantine Empire had gone from a superpower to a failed state, large swathes of the provinces falling to warlords, corruption becoming endemic and the treasury left barren through profligate spending on the emperor’s personal pleasure and massive bribes to foreign rulers and domestic generals to keep the emperor in power. By 1203 the northern Balkans, once part of the imperial heartland, had been lost completely to the increasingly hostile Bulgarians and large parts of mainland Greece, Macedonia, the Aegean Islands and Anatolia ignored the capital completely. Things would only get worse.
The son of Isaakios II, Alexios Angelos, had fled into exile to escape execution by his uncle. Seething at the loss of his birthright he toured the courts of Central Europe, demanding men and arms to restore him to the throne, and in 1202 he found them in the form of a crusading army in Dalmatia. He convinced the Crusaders to help him ‘restore the true faith’ in the Empire by installing him in Constantinople in exchange for vast amounts of money and support for a campaign in Egypt.
In July 1203, Alexios the Younger arrived outside Constantinople with this force at his back. Alexios III led a grand army out to challenge him, so large that some of the Crusaders began to reconsider their allegiance, only to lose his nerve and flee back to the capital. He then barricaded himself inside the palace while Alexios the Younger assaulted the walls, finally emptying the treasury and fleeing for his life to Adrianople in Thrace. Isaakios II was freed from prison and proclaimed emperor, joined soon there-after by the newly minted Alexios IV. It was then that Alexios the Younger realized the awful situation he’d gotten himself in.
Alexios had promised the Crusaders the equivalent of 200,000 marks; the state treasury currently consisted of dust and the few coins Alexios III had dropped on his way out. The Crusaders refused to leave until they were paid, camping outside the city walls while Alexios and Isaakios scrambled to put together the money to pay them. They came up with half the promised money through confiscations of Alexios III’s supporters and church property and gave it to the Crusaders, then demanded that they leave. The Crusaders refused to leave, at which point Alexios IV began insulting the large number of angry men with swords, swearing that they would get no more. In December the Constantinopolitan mob, furious at the Crusaders over religious disputes and a feeling of occupation, attacked a number of Crusaders at a market inside the city, quickly turning into an all out anti-Catholic riot. Alexios IV saw this as fortuitous and ordered the city gates closed, launching fireships at the Venetian-Crusader fleet and insisting that if they were just ignored for long enough the Crusaders would leave by themselves.
By January 1204, the people of Constantinople were increasingly angry at the co-emperors, seeing them both as ridiculously corrupt, incompetent traitors who were humiliating them and all of Orthodoxy by bowing to the Crusaders. The Angeloi did little to help themselves by placing extraordinary burdens of taxation and hunger on the people while living in lavish luxury themselves. On the 24th of January, the Senate--by this point a collection of a handful of ancient aristocrats with none of the power they had enjoyed millenia ago--convened to elect a new emperor. They were soon joined by large numbers of the urban poor and a number of minor church officials. By this time, so few men were loyal to the Angeloi that they were unable to disperse this meeting and could only barricade themselves even further within the palace. After three days of deliberation, sorting through various noblemen (all reluctant to accept, seeing acceptance as tantamount to suicide) this makeshift assembly found their man: Nikolaos Kanabos.
On the surface, Nikolaos appeared to be the perfect candidate. He was well-read and known for his wit and intelligence; he was a man of dignity and honor; he had fought and led men against the Bulgarians in Thrace[1]; moreover he looked the part, young and dashing with thick black hair, fair skin and piercing blue eyes. The chief problem with Nikolaos Kanabos taking the purple was that there were few things he would rather do less. He was a truly devout man and spending his entire life (save four years) under the corruption, decadence and degeneracy of the Angeloi had convinced him that power corrupted and taking the throne was a one-way journey to eternal hellfire[2]. He spent several hours arguing this point with the Senate, citing the moral sickness of the Angeloi, Doukai and proceeding dynasties and Christ’s temptation in the desert while he begged them to choose someone else; when the senators insisted on proclaiming him emperor, he fled with his wife[3] to the Hagia Sophia.
It was by sheer chance that Kanabos and Kanabene[4] found the nearest side door to the cathedral closed, sending him hurrying around to the nearest door. This was beside the offices of the Patriarchate on the Augustaion and his wife begged him to at least consult with the patriarch before he gave up hope. Nikolaos was admitted into the presence of the patriarch, Ioannes X, who pretended to listen while he spoke of his fears of divine judgement and temptation. Ioannes was distantly related to Alexios III through marriage and was thus angry at Isaakios II and Alexios IV for denying him his imperial patron; he saw in Kanabos a chance to regain a position of greater wealth and splendor. The patriarch thus told Nikolaos that God would not put an impossible task before him and that his fear of temptation and avarice would only make him a better emperor, subservient to the will of the divine and not his own. He also cited the many emperors, such as Constantine, Justinian and Irene of Athens who, though overcome by temptation, had sought forgiveness and been accepted into God’s presence. Nikolaos was convinced and departed the Hagia Sophia with the emperor’s blessing, determined to fulfill the task which God had set before him[5].
Large crowds had remained at the place of assembly, unsure of what to do when the emperor refused to rule. At Nikolaos’ approach they greeted him with roars of approval and chants of death to the Angeloi; a group of senators raised him on their shields, or the shields of their guards, and proclaimed him the rightful emperor. Nikolaos then spoke to the crowd, promising to lead them on the palace and depose the hated tyrants but begging them to be merciful, to not attack unless the guards of the palace refused to give way and not to kill if they could help it, for if nothing else they were Orthodox, while the true enemies were the heretics outside the walls. The mob then began to stream towards the palace while Nikolaos took command of the nobles there and their retainers, the men who were trained in fighting, and followed. Word soon reached the mob that Crusaders had come into the palace and the stream became a flood.
While Nikolaos had delayed Alexios had acted. Isaakios II was by far the wiser of the two and had tried to restrain his son’s worst excesses, but he had grown weaker and weaker and was now on his deathbed. Believing himself without any other option, Alexios had decided his only hope was to admit the Crusaders into the city in hopes that they would protect him against the mob and sent for Boniface of Montferrat, the leader of the Crusaders, who happened to be already in the palace, ordering him to bring his men into the city[6]. This was overheard by Alexios Doukas Mourtzouphlos, the chief official of the Angeloi, who was deeply ambitious and held a great personal hatred of the Catholics. He thus ordered that word of Alexios’ actions be spread among the mob so that they might turn against the Angeloi, then gathered his kinsmen and retainers and hurried to the barracks of the Varangian Guard. He told the Varangians that the Angeloi intended to replace them with the Crusaders and offered them rich bonuses if they acclaimed him emperor; they did so, and Alexios Doukas hurried to the palace with his host.
Alexios Doukas and the Varangians arrived at the emperor’s quarters just as the leading edge of the mob did; chaos ensued. Alexios Angelos had barricaded himself inside a wing of the palace with a body of guards and the few knights which Boniface had left to defend him until he returned; they did not speak Greek. The Varangians were whipped into a frenzy and roaring in their various tongues; the guards and Crusaders thought that they had come to kill them all and so fought desperately, all while a ragged mob armed with knives and clubs poured in through every door and window. By the time Nikolaos arrived with his force, Alexios Angelos had been killed and decapitated and Isaakios II was dead, but no-one was sure what was happening beyond that; Nikolaos declared Alexios Doukas was a traitor and regicide and ordered him seized; in the confusion and struggle he was instead killed, as were a great number of guards, Varangians and the noble allies of both Doukas and Kanabos. A cry went up that Alexios Doukas and the Angeloi were dead, and both factions’ men turned and fled; the palace was then overrun by a looting mob until nightfall, when they dispersed and the stragglers were driven off by Kanabos’ men. The crown of Isaakios II was found in a closet and secured, while Alexios IV’s was stolen and never found; the heads of both emperors were raised on pikes outside the palace to confirm their deaths, while their bodies were quickly given Christian burials.
Early the next day, the 28th of January, Nikolaos was formally crowned and proclaimed emperor after a mass in the Hagia Sophia. Apocryphal stories tell of the crown still being warm with Alexios’ blood when placed upon Nikolaos’ head, which is almost certainly false but likely true to the new emperor’s thoughts. After the coronation the urban mob assembled in the Augustaion, where Nikolaos gave a speech from the palace balcony. He painted the Crusaders as an army of demons brought upon Constantinople by the people’s sins, the decline of recent years as a product of decadence and perversion on part of emperors and the Byzantine Empire as a whole like Israel, turned from the ways of righteousness by stiff-neckedness and deceit. He swore that he would dedicate himself, the emperorship and the empire at large to the true faith, pledging to shed the wealth and wickedness of the Angeloi and calling upon the people of Constantinople to do the same, to turn once more to God in the assurance that, like Israel, they would be forgiven and delivered from destruction. This was cheered by the crowds, who once more acclaimed him emperor. The imperial larder was then passed out among the poor as charity, to be replaced in the palace by bread and water.
Despite himself, Nikolaos Kanabos had taken power and now ruled within Constantinople. However, the threat outside the city’s wall grew greater by the minute and threatened to destroy the Empire once and for all…
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[1] Choniates says (you’ll hear that a lot) that Kanabos was ‘experienced in generalship and war’ but doesn’t tell us how so; this is an assumption of mine and ultimately irrelevant
[2] This may or may not have been his justification for refusing power IOTL; I have no way of knowing, but I’m trying to piece together a character from circumstantial evidence and this seems to fit.
[3] Choniates says he was married but doesn’t describe his wife; I’m not sure what I’m going to do with her yet and so will keep references to a minimum until I do.
[4] Speculative feminization of ‘Kanabos’; the aforementioned wife.
[5] This is the point of divergence; IOTL, Kanabos buried himself deep within the Hagia Sophia and refused to come out until Alexios V had him dragged out and killed.
[6] The sources conflict over the exact sequence of events, some saying that Alexios IV told Alexios V to summon Baldwin, but Choniates (an eyewitness to most of this) says that Baldwin was already in the palace and only overheard by Alexios V. 1