E-viri
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NATHAN LEIDHOLM
Elite Byzantine Kinship, ca. 950-1204, 08/2019Book Chapter
“BASIL VATATZES D. 1194, the scion of an undistinguished family (γένους μὲν ἀσήμου), had been honoured with the office of Domestic of the East and girded with the ducal command of the Thrakesion theme because he was married to the emperor’s second cousin on his father’s side.”¹ With these words the Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates describes the beginnings of the meteoric rise of the family of Batatzes (alternately written as Vatatzes). Within a single generation, Basil’s descendants could be counted among the most politically and socially influential people in Byzantium and its successor states after 1204. By the first few
