Theodore II Laskaris
Theodore II Laskaris ruled the Byzantine government-in-exile at Nicaea for four years and left it strong enough for someone else to recover Constantinople. He was born in 1221, after the Fourth Crusade had taken Constantinople and broken the empire into pieces, and grew up in a state that considered itself the legitimate Roman empire operating from western Anatolia. He was unusually well educated even for a Byzantine emperor, taught by Nikephoros Blemmydes, and wrote theology, philosophy and a correspondence that survives; he took the intellectual life seriously enough that his letters are a main source for the period. He succeeded his father John III Vatatzes in 1254 and was immediately tested by the Bulgarians, who assumed a new and bookish emperor would be weak, and he campaigned personally in Thrace and Macedonia and beat them. His domestic policy was a deliberate attack on the great aristocratic families. He promoted men of modest birth to the highest offices, imprisoned and blinded members of the Palaiologos and Mouzalon houses on suspicion of conspiracy, and made enemies of exactly the people who would decide what happened after him. He suffered from epilepsy, which grew worse and which he treated with increasing suspicion of those around him. He died in 1258 at thirty-six, leaving a seven-year-old son under the regency of a favourite. The aristocracy killed the regent within days, and Michael Palaiologos took the throne, blinded the boy, and entered Constantinople in 1261 with the army Theodore had built. His reputation has recovered somewhat with the publication of his writings, which show a ruler with a coherent programme rather than a paranoid invalid. The Nicaean state he inherited and improved was well governed, solvent and militarily competent, which is more than can be said for the restored empire it became.
- Lived: 1221 CE – 1258 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, scholar, writer
