Alexios V Doukas Mourtzouphlos
Alexios V ruled Constantinople for two months and was the last emperor to defend it against the Fourth Crusade. His nickname, Mourtzouphlos, referred to heavy or joined eyebrows. He came to power in the crisis of early 1204. The crusaders had restored the blind Isaac II and crowned his son Alexios IV, who had promised them 200,000 silver marks and could not pay a fraction of it, having already melted down church plate and imperial ornaments. The city held the young emperor responsible for the foreigners camped outside it and for the fire that had burned a large part of it. An assembly in Hagia Sophia tried to find someone else, and Mourtzouphlos, a court official with a record of opposing the Latins, took the throne in late January and had Alexios IV strangled with a bowstring. He then did what neither of his predecessors had done: repaired the walls, raised the towers with wooden hoardings, and fought. The crusaders attacked the sea walls in April 1204 and were repulsed once. Three days later they lashed ships together to put more men against a single tower, got over, and opened a gate. Alexios V left the city that night. He joined Alexios III, who had him blinded and abandoned him, and was captured by the Latins. They tried him for the murder of Alexios IV and threw him from the top of the column of Theodosius in the winter of 1204. He is the only Byzantine emperor executed by foreigners in his own capital, and the manner of it was chosen for the message: the column carried a relief that was said to prophesy the city's fall, and the Latins used it as a scaffold.
- Lived: 1140 CE – 1204 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader
