Alexander (Byzantine Emperor)
Alexander reigned in his own right for thirteen months and undid much of what his brother had spent twenty-five years arranging. He was the son of Basil I, was crowned co-emperor as a child in 879, and then spent his entire adult life as the junior colleague of his brother Leo VI, excluded from any real business and reportedly devoting himself to hunting, the circus and drinking. Leo died in May 912 leaving a six-year-old son, Constantine VII, whose legitimacy was contested because he was the product of a fourth marriage the church had refused to recognise. Alexander became senior emperor and regent. He removed the admiral of the fleet and the patriarch Euthymios, restoring the rival patriarch Nicholas Mystikos who had opposed Leo's marriage, which reopened the quarrel about the boy's status. He is also reported to have considered castrating his nephew to remove him from the succession, and to have been dissuaded. His decisive act was foreign. Symeon of Bulgaria sent envoys to renew the peace his brother had maintained, and Alexander dismissed them and refused the annual payments, which produced a war that ran for the better part of twenty years, brought Bulgarian armies to the walls of Constantinople, and was among the most damaging the empire fought in that century. He died in June 913, reportedly of exhaustion after a game of polo. The chroniclers, who are hostile, add that he had been warned by an astrologer and had a bronze boar in the Hippodrome given new teeth as a precaution.
- Lived: 870 CE – 913 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
