Staurakios
Staurakios was emperor of Byzantium for two months and one week, and spent almost all of it dying of a spinal wound. He was the son of Nikephoros I, a former finance minister who had taken the throne from the empress Irene in 802 and had spent his reign on unpopular but effective fiscal reform and on war with the Bulgars. Staurakios was crowned co-emperor in 803 and campaigned with his father in the summer of 811. That campaign began well. The Byzantines took the Bulgar capital at Pliska, sacked and burned it, and refused Khan Krum's offers of peace. They were then caught in a mountain pass on the way home, at Varbitsa, where the Bulgars had blocked the exits with palisades and attacked at night. The army was destroyed on 26 July 811, Nikephoros was killed, and Krum had his skull lined with silver and used it as a drinking cup. Staurakios was carried off the field with a sword wound near the neck that had severed or crushed the spine, leaving him paralysed below the waist. He was proclaimed emperor at Adrianople and taken to Constantinople, where he lay unable to move while his wife Theophano and his sister Prokopia manoeuvred over the succession. He is reported to have talked of abolishing the monarchy in favour of a republic, which is a startling thing for the sources to record. He abdicated in October 811 in favour of his brother-in-law Michael, entered a monastery, and died in January.
- Lived: 778 CE – 812 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
