John II Komnenos
John II campaigned every year for twenty-five years and was killed by a poisoned hunting arrow. He was the son of Alexios I and succeeded in 1118 against the opposition of his mother and his sister Anna Komnene, who had written a history of their father and preferred her own husband; the conspiracy failed and he confiscated her property and then gave it back. He was known as the Good, which is unusual in the sources for a Byzantine emperor and is applied by writers who had no reason to flatter him. The reign was almost entirely military and almost entirely successful. He destroyed the Pechenegs as a people in 1122 so completely that the victory was still celebrated with an annual holiday, beat the Hungarians, fought Venice to a settlement over its trading privileges, and spent his later years in Anatolia and Cilicia recovering territory from the Danishmends and the Armenians. He forced Antioch to acknowledge Byzantine overlordship in 1137 and rode into it in triumph. His last plan was a joint campaign with the crusader states against Aleppo, which the crusaders had no intention of joining. He was hunting boar in Cilicia in April 1143 when he scratched his hand on one of his own arrows, which had been treated with poison for the hunt; the wound turned septic and he died within days. He named his fourth son Manuel as heir on his deathbed over the elder brother. The dynasty's high point ended with him. His sister Anna is the reason his father's reign is the best-documented in Byzantine history and his own is not. The Alexiad she wrote in retirement is a masterpiece and stops where her grievance begins.
- Lived: 1087 CE – 1143 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader, general
