Romanos I Lekapenos
Romanos Lekapenos was an Armenian peasant's son who became admiral of the fleet, married his daughter to the boy emperor, and reigned for twenty-four years without ever displacing him. His father had been a soldier who pulled an emperor out of a ditch, which is the family's entry into the record. He commanded the imperial fleet in 919, when the government of the child Constantine VII was collapsing and a rival faction was manoeuvring for the regency, and simply sailed into the harbour and took the palace. His method afterwards was careful and characteristic. He married his daughter to Constantine, took the title of basileopator, then Caesar, then senior emperor, and had his own sons crowned above the legitimate heir — and never removed the boy, which preserved the appearance of legitimacy that the whole arrangement rested on. The reign's achievements were substantial. Symeon of Bulgaria, who had besieged Constantinople repeatedly, was outlasted and then settled with by marriage; the eastern frontier was pushed forward by John Kourkouas, who took Melitene and brought back the Mandylion of Edessa; and a series of laws attempted to stop the great landowning families buying out peasant smallholders after the famine of 928, which is the central social question of the century. He was overthrown in December 944 by his own sons, who were then overthrown by Constantine VII six weeks later. He died a monk on the island of Prote in 948, having written a public confession of his sins. His land legislation is the most interesting thing about him. He understood that an empire whose armies came from peasant smallholdings could not let the great families absorb them, and every capable emperor for the next century fought the same battle and eventually lost it.
- Lived: 870 CE – 948 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, admiral
