Byzantine Emperors Family Tree (Constantine the Great to 1453)

hi my name is jack rackham and today i'm going to show you over 1 000 years of history as we go down the family tree of eastern roman emperors from constantine the great to constantine the 11th those 94 emperors shaped the empire dramatically swinging from golden ages to dark ages and back again with sometimes just a few years in between and yes we'll be talking about greek fire and the varangian guard and a lot of civil wars so we're going to begin on the family tree of roman emperors because after all the byzantine empire was just a continuation of the roman empire just without rome at least for the most part the third century a.d was a time of crisis for the roman empire for many reasons but among those reasons were the fact that the empire's size made it very difficult to manage especially given that most emperor's reigns were very short and transitions between emperors were very messy so with that in mind emperor diocletian created the tetrarchy a system with two senior emperors one in the east and one in the west this was the first official division between east and west indicated by the fact that these roman emperor numbers turn into these blue numbers for the east and these green numbers for the west although again both were still roman the elder of the senior emperors would guide the other and each would have a junior emperor to assist them and to one day succeed them having already gained years of experience and in diocletian's time this system worked very well so well in fact that he was able to end his reign peacefully by simply retiring but only a year after his retirement the system broke down and civil war began conflict continued for another 18 years until constantine emerged as the sole power in the entire empire he's famous for several things first of all he allegedly had a vision of a cross in the sky before an important battle which led him to declare tolerance for christianity across the empire he wasn't personally baptized until on his deathbed but he played an important role in shaping the religion by assembling the first council of nicaea in which a group of bishops from across the empire came together to decide what beliefs were official church doctrine and which were heresy he also moved the empire's capital to constantinople which was closer to the wealthy eastern provinces that were under threat of invasion by the persians the previous name of the city was byzantium from which we get the term byzantine and it's for this reason that constantine is considered to be the first byzantine emperor he had three sons whose names were constans constantius and constantine yes really they split the empire into three but constans and constantine ended up fighting each other while constantius fought the persians until constans defeated constantine ii and there was once again one emperor in the west and one in the east but then constans was overthrown by a man named magnentius he and constantius fought and constantius became sole ruler of rome the point of this story is that constantius was all out of relatives except his brother-in-law julian who ended up becoming the next emperor julian was born to a christian family but then converted to polytheism and attempted to promote polytheism as the official state religion earning him the name julian the apostate he didn't persecute christians in the same way as previous emperors though and he attempted to rebuild the temple at jerusalem he was also a philosopher and enjoyed several military successes against the alimony a tribe for whom germany is named in several languages such as french and spanish as well as against the persians he got as far as the persian capital but chose not to lay siege to it which caused him to lose the war and five roman provinces as a result before he died on campaign his successor jovian then restored christianity as the state religion making julian the last non-christian roman emperor that was about all jovian managed to do as he was with julian in his persian campaign and died before returning to constantinople he was followed by valentinian who is considered the last great western roman emperor he split the empire again by giving the eastern half to his brother valens beginning the valentinian dynasty which would rule for a few decades before the empire was reunited in the hands of theodosius the great he achieved a significant victory against the goths one of the many tribes attacking from the borders of rome but his victory wasn't absolute allowing them to rebound in the years to follow he also continued to de-paganize the empire earning him recognition as a saint by the eastern orthodox church he disbanded the vestal virgins one of the oldest and most significant hellenistic institutions in rome and allowed for the destruction of hellenistic temples all told though christianity had been growing for centuries the empire's official conversion was remarkably swift theodosius the first was followed by onorius in the west and by arcadius in the east arcadius in turn was followed by theodosius ii he constructed the famous theodosian walls around constantinople it's no coincidence that he was also the emperor of the eastern roman empire during the time that attila the hun was leading successful attacks against the empire all throughout the balkans all the way up to the outskirts of the capital though he tried to confront attila militarily his ultimate strategy was simply to pay off the huns in exchange for peace though i won't mention it every time this was a very common strategy for the byzantines theodosius ii also engaged with establishing christian orthodoxy as there were several different schools of thought concerning christology or how exactly jesus divinity and humanity interacted with each other during the reign of theodosius ii a powerful general named aspar began to rise to power behind the scenes he was born a foreigner and held unorthodox beliefs so he couldn't take the title of emperor for himself but following theodosius death aspar was instrumental in choosing the next emperor marcion who had been a personal assistant of theodosius serving under aspar's command despite his lack of experience in government the empire prospered under marcion in addition to settling more matters of christology he broke the treaties theodosius had made with attila leading attila to attack italy until marcion invaded the huns homeland i.e the hungarian plane this in combination with a famine in northern italy and allegedly the intervention of pope leo the first persuaded attila to turn around and after attila's death marcion used his military victory in the hungarian plane to settle hunnic lands with roman citizens however marcion was already nearing 60 when he took the throne so his reign was not a long one marcion married one of his daughters to one of his generals in hopes that he would become his successor but aspar was again pulling the strings on matters of succession he had a son who was born a roman citizen who wasn't yet of age so he installed leo the first as emperor given that he was in his 60s already and had one daughter and no heirs meaning that if all went to plan he would die without an heir in a few years at which point aspar's son would be ready for the throne but all did not go according to plan despite his old age leo conceived another daughter and critically a son that son however died five months after his birth but leo had other plans he recruited his own personal guard from a group of people who lived in the remote mountains of southern anatolia and had in the past resisted roman rule for centuries picture the spartans but in modern day turkey one of these men came forth with evidence of a conspiracy being plotted by aspar's son asbar and his son were eventually killed and the man who unveiled their conspiracy was richly rewarded by a close alliance with leo and his daughter's hand in marriage that man was xeno and when leo the first died in 474 zeno's son named leo ii became emperor however he died shortly after of natural causes and thus zeno himself became emperor but while zeno may have been born within the empire he was still considered a foreigner by the elite of constantinople especially considering his complete lack of aristocratic ancestry he was quickly ousted by a revolt led by his mother-in-law varena who placed her brother basiliskis on the throne however basiliskas quickly made enemies of all his co-conspirators so when zeno laid siege to constantinople in 476 the senate simply opened the gates and allowed him to take the empire back basiliskas ran to a church for sanctuary and made xeno promise that he wouldn't shed his blood zeno agreed and locked basiliscus and his family in a dry cistern where they all died of exposure now the year 476 might sound familiar to you and that's because 476 is the year that the western roman empire fell to the germanic general otowacer the loss of the west was a major blow to the empire even if odawaser pledged to be a nominal vassal of the eastern roman empire but at the time there wasn't much zeno could do about it because he was faced with the threat of attack from the ostrogoths and the balkans but having been so successful in constantinople as a result of having his enemies fight each other he attempted to pit two ostrogothic leaders both named theoderic against one another but when they met they united and thus zena was faced with a much larger threat than he had started with zeno then promised the kingship of italy to theoderic the great hoping for his two greatest foes to wear each other out but theoderic the crate quickly defeated odo acer and killed him at the alleged peace banquet thus inheriting italy as well and the opposite happened domestically zeno tried to reconcile two christological factions only to wind up creating a schism within the faith zeno died in 491 without any sons and so his wife ariadne chose his successor anastasius and married him shortly after this was a bit of an upset as zeno had a brother who was very popular in the city of constantinople but in some ways it turned out to be a good choice for the empire anastasius showed an intense interest in the empire's economy minimizing embezzlement and corruption though he himself frequently sold political offices introducing new coinage and conducting more trade and taxation through cash rather than bartering as a result he built up an enormous surplus in the empire's treasury an estimated 320 000 pounds of gold by the time of his death his attempts to save money backfired however when he refused to buy peace from the persians they then declared war ending the longest period of peace that the roman empire ever had with persia and beginning a new series of wars that would end up weakening both empires and allowing for the rise of islam but while he couldn't have seen the emergence of a new superpower from arabia he was painfully aware of the fact that he had no sons to take his place he did however have three nephews and so according to legend he made up his mind to have fate decide which of them would become his heir he placed the message under one of three couches in his room and called his nephews in to speak with him unfortunately two of the nephews sat on the same couch and while having co-emperors wasn't uncommon the couch they both sat on was not the one with the message under it in fact none of them sat on the correct seat so anastasia made things simpler he made up his mind that the next person to walk through the door would be his heir and that person was justin the head of the royal guard of course a lot of people had other plans but despite being illiterate and born to a peasant family justin's 60 years of experience in the army allowed him to outmaneuver all of them and become emperor establishing the justinian dynasty justin was a successful emperor being able to mend the schism that erupted during zeno's reign but he's largely eclipsed by his son justinian the most famous of all byzantine emperors save perhaps for constantine he was famous firstly for his military campaigns in which he reclaimed the city of rome and most of italy and northern africa as well as the east coast of the black sea which had never been held in roman hands before the economy flourished as a result in spite of riots plague and other natural disasters and the byzantines conducted trade as far away as cornwall and snuck silkworms into the capital from china he also took old laws going as far back as hadrian simplified them gave them a christian update where appropriate and compiled them all into one place the corpus juris civilis which is the foundation of civil law in many countries the world over today and of course he constructed the highest sophia the empire continued to enjoy a great deal of success with justinian's successors justin ii and tiberius the second and then the man at the bottom of this chart maurice during his reign the lombards invaded much of italy but overall the empire was still on the up and up he helped restore the persian shah to power which led to an agreement between the two of them to respect an eternal peace with no payment necessary this allowed him to focus his efforts to the west where his armies had successfully crossed the danube but after making cuts to the soldiers salaries and commanding them to spend the winter in germanic lands they revolted and proclaimed a centurion to be their new emperor the persian shah was not happy about this and thus the eternal peace was suddenly called off and the byzantine sassanid wars continued while there isn't an exact cut-off date it's around this time that the eastern roman empire goes into a dark age there are many wars with persia in which the persians at one point nearly conquer all of anatolia and then the rashidun and subsequent umayyad caliphates take away just about all of the byzantine's holdings in africa and the levant the loss of these lands made it difficult to feed the population in the remaining territories and with enemies on all sides between the caliphates and the bulgars trade dried up because of all the fighting even though they invented a sort of medieval napalm called greek fire a centralized army simply wasn't fast enough to respond to threats and so each province became increasingly self-reliant and detached from constantinople where emperors deposed each other one after the other during the 20 years anarchy meanwhile the church in rome and the byzantine emperors became increasingly hostile to one another though the great schism wouldn't come until the 11th century this hostility came to a head in the 9th century when pope leo iii pronounced charlemagne the emperor of the romans even though as we saw you can trace a line of succession from any of the eastern roman emperors all the way back to constantine and thus to augustus all this takes us to the royal european family trees north east chart beginning in the year 867 with the accession of basil the first who is sometimes referred to as the second justinian like emperor justin basil the first was born as a peasant and instead of working his way up the ranks in the army he found work in the court of emperor michael iii where he became close to the emperor's relatives and eventually became a favorite of the emperor himself michael proclaimed basil co-emperor in 866 and in 867 basil had him assassinated but the real reason he's known as the second justinian is how he spent his time on the throne he took justinian's law codes and the laws passed since then and simplified and codified them this time into greek which was by then the official language of the empire he also launched a campaign to retake land in the west from the arabs with the help of holy roman emperor louis ii he died in 886 from a fever that was the result of a serious hunting accident the story goes he got his belt caught on a deer's antlers and was dragged for 16 miles before being cut down and then ordered the execution of the man who saved him because he thought he was trying to assassinate him in any case basil the first was succeeded by leo vi aka leo the wise leo the wise was officially basil's son but it's possible that he was actually the son of michael iii he certainly acted as though he was michael's son as he and basil never got along and his first act as emperor was to re-bury michael with greater honor as his name suggests he was a very well-educated man who finished basil's work on compiling the empire's laws and went out of his way to reform the government's structure he's the one who abolished the consulship and stripped the senate of its remaining political power though it continued to exist in an honorary sort of way perhaps similar to the way the united kingdom continues to have a royal family today leo the wise was succeeded by his brother alexander whom basil the first had wanted to inherit the empire but he turned out to be exceedingly unpopular both on account of his personality and the fact that in 13 months he managed to be attacked by the abbasids and the bulgarians before dying of exhaustion in a game of polo he was nominally succeeded by leo's son constantine vii but he was under the care of a regency council until 9 20 when romanos the first took the title of co-emperor and entirely eclipsed the young constantine thus constantine's dates are interrupted and he returns to power only in 944 this wasn't because romanos had died but actually because after the death of his most competent son he intended to leave the empire for constantine after his death this upset his other sons who forced their father into exile as a monk but the people of constantinople refused to allow them to come to power both romanos and constantine had generally poor results in warfare such as the wars brought on by alexander and constantine's son romanos ii reigned for only a few short years before dying mysteriously on a hunting trip after him however came a series of increasingly exceptional military emperors the first of these was nikepharos ii a man largely unpopular both among his own people and abroad he failed to make much headway in the west but led a few successful campaigns in the east that would later be compounded by his successor john the first jon killed his uncle nikepharos in his sleep and went on to win victories across the increasingly fractured abbasid caliphate for which a triumph was held in constantinople and he also won victories in bulgaria where he led his army to victory in the bulgarian capital jon was then succeeded by the next most famous byzantine after justinian basil ii his reign not including the 16 years he spent as co-monarch was the longest of any roman emperor byzantine or otherwise and was the peak of a golden age for the empire his nickname was the bulgar slayer which he earned for completely subjugating the bulgars all the way up to the danube river leaving the empire in a position of strength it hadn't seen in generations thus to the byzantines and today to the greeks he's considered a hero whereas in bulgaria he's considered a villain he also made peace with the ruse by marrying his sister to vladimir the great of novgorod and kiev which contributed to christianization in those lands and also to the formation of the varangian guard when his brother-in-law sent a contingent of six thousand men to constantinople if there was one part of his diplomacy that ended up backfiring it was perhaps that the assistance he received from venice was too effective leading to the eventual decline of the byzantine navy basil ii was also a successful advocate for reform who introduced new taxes obligating wealthy land owners to pay the taxes owed by their poorer neighbors if they were unable to pay while serving military duty when he eventually died he did so with no sons and thus the empire was passed to his brother constantine viii the remainder of the macedonian dynasty was led by substantially less competent emperors who more or less coasted off of the stability afforded by basil's success constantine viii had no sons and so he gave power to his daughter zoe's husband romanos iii he was found dead in the bath and allegedly on the same day zoe married michael iv but he was afraid of her turning on him like she had done with her previous husband so he kept her out of politics and worked with his brother instead that brother forced zoey to adopt michael v when michael iv was on his deathbed michael v was michael the fourth's nephew by a sister hence he's technically connected to the dynasty if quite distantly and through marriage michael v initially banished empress zoe but was obliged by popular demand to bring her back to the capital and not long after he was deposed by a mob zoe then empress regnant attempted to banish her sister theodora in turn but the senate evidently holding on to some vestige of power or popular will insisted that the sisters rule together in response zoe married constantine ix so that she could split power with him instead it's during constantine the ninth tenure that the great schism officially begins churches in italy holding on to greek traditions were forced to step into line with the papacy or else be shut down and representatives from the pope and the eastern roman emperor excommunicated each other at the time the latter event wasn't seen as especially significant perhaps because many popes and emperors had been in conflict with one another but today it's seen as the clearest mark of the split between the roman catholic and eastern orthodox churches constantine ix outlived his wife and after his death the empire would have gone to one of the dukes but theodora emerged from retirement to assert her claim as empress though she had retired peacefully when zoe had shifted power away from her her brief reign was a brutal one in which many senior officials were purged she died a year later at the age of 76 having refused to marry or name a successor and so her advisors met and decided to name the manipulable michael vi ending the 189-year rule of the macedonian dynasty michael however soon proved to be an unpopular choice and was quickly replaced by isaac komnenos in a revolt as emperor isaac made a priority to reward his supporters and bolster the military as well as reform the government and fill the treasury perhaps taking after the best aspects of the leonid dynasty but we'll never know if he would have succeeded because he fell deathly ill at the age of 53 passing the throne to constantine the tenth who quickly reversed all of isaac's reforms the empire continued to suffer civil unrest under the dukid dynasty until its civil strifes were superseded by its external military strife in 1071 the emperor romanos iv lost the battle of manzakurt and all of anatolia was lost to the celtic turks he was succeeded by michael vii most remembered for devaluing the empire's currency and then by nikephras iii who revolted against michael and then faced four different revolts in as many years before finally being deposed by alexios the first komnenos now alexios was a general and his decision to depose nycapharos iii came at the expense of retreating from the normans in southern italy but his rule saw the komneni dynasty begin in earnest he also began what's known as the komnenian restoration in a controversial fashion by melting down church artifacts and selling church lands in order to pay for a newly renovated army it wasn't a very popular move but it turned out to be a necessary one you're probably familiar with the story of the first crusade and well alexios comnenos was the byzantine emperor who appealed to the pope for help but instead of a small force of professional knights he was greeted with thousands of western europeans traveling through byzantine land to reach the holy land causing byzantine citizens a great deal of grief as they did nonetheless when the crusaders did arrive in the levant alexios was able to take advantage of the situation and send his armies into anatolia and begin reclaiming lost territory part of why we know so much about his life in addition to his fairly long reign and involvement in an event as memorable as the first crusade is that his life was documented in great detail if with a strong bias by his daughter anna she captured her father's reign in a book dubbed the alexiad invoking the legendary status of the roman epic the aeneid and the greek epics the odyssey and the iliad when he passed he left his throne to his son john ii who is considered to be the greatest of the comnenoy even though his life isn't as well chronicled so we only have accounts of his military accomplishments he reformed the military to make it more centralized and continued retaking anatolia by laying siege to one city at a time and avoiding any large battles that might go the way of manzakurt and in the process he ended up successfully incorporating the entire anatolian coast into the byzantine empire once more just like basil the bulger slayer though he relied heavily on the aid of venice for naval battles and when he came into conflict with them he was soundly defeated by the city-state the impact of the loss wasn't catastrophic but it was a bad omen of things to come john ii was followed by manuel the first whose legacy is mostly one of ambitious military ventures met with failure he was the last emperor to attempt to reclaim the former lands of the western roman empire and his loss to saladin allowed the latter to present a new threat in the east nonetheless manuel was exceedingly popular in his own time both with the empire and abroad being revered by contemporary historians as the most blessed among emperors he passed the throne to his son alexios ii who was too young to rule and so the empire was left in the hands of manuel's wife maria of antioch but as you can see alexios was only emperor for three years and that's because he was deposed by andronicus a man famous for his cruelty he had been imprisoned for conspiring against his cousin manuel but escaped and when manuel died andronicos very publicly returned to constantinople with a wave of popular support he used the tension between byzantines and western europeans to lead a massacre against catholics in 1182 and to decry the empress maria's latin roots and depose her son however his cruelty continued as emperor and ultimately saw him overthrown and replaced with isaac ii of the angelid dynasty isaac like alexios the first used the military skills he demonstrated in claiming the throne to benefit the empire but he was ultimately unable to stand up against holy roman emperor frederick barbarossa the leader of the third crusade who demanded that the crusaders be allowed to travel through byzantine holdings once again but of course it wasn't the third crusade that caused the most trouble for the byzantines the trouble began when isaac was deposed and imprisoned by his brother alexios iii and his son and heir alexios iv was exiled alexios iv sent a message to the members of the fourth crusade who were planning to fight in egypt but had already attacked a christian city as payment to venice for their ships in his message he promised them wealth in exchange for helping restore his father to the throne he and the crusaders successfully deposed alexios iii and gave the title of emperor to isaac ii though alexis iv held the real power however alexios was unable to pay the crusaders as promised which allowed alexios iii's son-in-law alexios v to come to power this however didn't change the empire's ability to pay and when negotiations failed and the crusaders were already within the city there was nothing alexis v could do to stop them from taking over and turning constantinople into a crusader state and so for half a century the byzantine empire ceased to exist succeeded by a handful of rump states ruled by aristocrats with distant connections to previous emperors for instance one state called the empire of trebezond had a ruler descended from the cruel andronicos the first but the one to keep track of is the empire of nicaea founded by a minor aristocrat with ties to alexios komnenos through his mother over 50 years later the successor to the empire of nicaea was michael viii who was able to reconquer constantinople and the byzantine empire with constantinople in his hands he reconstructed the city and re-established the university of constantinople leading to what's known as the paleologian renaissance somehow even after losing the capital the byzantine empire managed to bounce back with a mini golden age that would last for another 200 years michael viii even tried to reunite with the papacy but after so long since the great schism and with the fourth crusade in recent memory there was virtually no one to support him in fostering that alliance still he accomplished a lot with the strength of his own army and a newly boosted navy winning portions of the bulgarian empire while it was embroiled in its own series of civil wars however in shifting his military's focus almost entirely on the bulgarians while occasional conflicts with other successor states from the fourth crusade left anatolia weakened he unknowingly opened the door for the byzantine empire's ultimate enemy the ottomans michael's successor andronicos ii saw that threat realized as the ottomans quickly conquered constantinople's last holdings in anatolia never to be returned meanwhile he was engaged in conflict with his own grandson andronicos iii who dethroned his grandfather and took over in 1328 andronicos iii however died early resulting in a power vacuum his designated successor was john v but as you can see here his reign was constantly being challenged by rival claimants at the same time that the ottomans established a foothold in europe john v's ultimate successor manuel ii was briefly on good terms with the ottomans but his attempts to interfere with the ottoman succession resulted in a new assault on constantinople manuel ceded the throne to his son john and spent his last months on earth searching for european allies to defend against the mounting crisis but they were spent in vain john viii like michael viii looked for a last-ditch ally in the papacy going as far as ratifying a document uniting the eastern and western churches but it was beyond his power to undo centuries of conflict in the eyes of the people the ottomans by this point controlled the majority of asia minor and the balkans leaving for byzantium only the peloponnese region in greece and the land immediately surrounding constantinople john viii died in 1448 of natural causes but his son was not so fortunate just as rome in the west began and ended with a romulus rome in the east began and ended with a constantine constantine xi died the day constantinople fell so this has been a video and a half on the rich and storied history of the eastern roman empire using a chart and a half both available at usefulcharts.com if you want to hear more about the fate of the western roman empire beginning with augustus caesar you can watch our video on that via the card on the screen or in the link in the description you may have noticed this pink line continues beyond constantine the 11th if you're wondering where it leads we have a video on the family tree of the russian tsars but if you're wondering who holds the claimed constantinople today and thus who would be the true heir to the roman empire we have another video that seeks to answer that question because perhaps it's a descendant of the paleologos line perhaps the ottomans earned that title for themselves by rite of conquest or maybe it's all bogus and charlemagne and his descendants really were the true emperors of the romans if you haven't already you can watch that video by following the link on screen in just a moment and of course you can pick up a thousand years of history at usefulcharts.com thanks for watching [Music] you

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Length: 34min 28sec (2068 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 14 2020