John IV Laskaris
John IV Laskaris was blinded on his eleventh birthday by the man who had promised to protect him. Born in 1250, he was the son of Theodore II Laskaris, emperor of Nicaea — the Byzantine successor state in Asia Minor that had preserved the empire in exile since the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204. His father died in 1258 when he was seven, leaving him to a regency under the bureaucrat George Mouzalon. Mouzalon was murdered at the memorial service nine days later by soldiers acting for the aristocracy, and Michael Palaiologos — a nobleman whose family the Laskarids had distrusted for two generations — was made regent, then co-emperor, and was crowned before the child in Hagia Sophia at Nicaea in 1259. Michael then won the prize. His general Alexios Strategopoulos found Constantinople almost empty of troops in July 1261, entered by a postern, and recovered the city after fifty-seven years of Latin rule. Michael entered in triumph in August and was crowned again, alone, and John's name was dropped from the acclamations. On Christmas Day 1261, John's eleventh birthday, he was blinded and confined to a fortress on the Marmara. The patriarch Arsenios excommunicated Michael for it and refused to lift it, and was deposed — producing the Arsenite schism that divided the Byzantine church for forty years. John lived on in confinement for decades, visited once by Michael's son Andronikos II, who asked his forgiveness. He died around 1305. The empire Michael recovered survived another two centuries, exhausted and shrinking, and the family that took it held it to the end.
- Lived: 1250 CE – 1305 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
