A Happy Discovery...

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     It is a pity that we so often succeed in our endeavors to deceive each another.

            - Empress Irene of Byzantium





     My most recent visit to Half-Price Books yielded a happy result. A book titled Doomed Queens brought my attention to the historical figure our favorite Attolian queen is likely based on.

      I've highlighted interesting points in bold.

    The first woman ever to hold the throne of the Roman Caesars in her own right, however illegally, the empress Irene was born to an obscure but noble Greek family of Athens. Her beauty alone seems to have gained her the marriage to Leo, son of the Emperor Constantine V Copronymus (740-75). Ruthless and ambitious, she is widely suspected of having poisoned her husband after which she governed the Empire as regent and sole ruler for 22 years. Noted for her liberality, her freeing of prisoners and, above all, for her convening of the Second Council of Nicaea, and for her efforts to restore the veneration of sacred images, Irene was popular among the people despite the irregularity of her conduct of the affairs of state.

     Irene came to power as regent for her son (780) in the midst of the iconoclastic controversy which wracked the Empire for a century (726-87, 815-43). The veneration of sacred images (icons) having grown in intensity and popularity ever since the legalization of Christianity in the fourth century, had developed remarkably in the sixth and seventh centuries, especially encouraged by the emperors of the Heraclid dynasty. It had become so extreme in the East - to the point of bordering on idolatry - that a reaction developed against the practice. To their defenders, the icons were mere representations, visible images of invisible realities, subject to respect and devotion but never to veneration or worship - the position of the Roman Catholic Church to this day,

     For nearly two decades, Irene's power as regent was secure, but as Constantine VI approached manhood, he was determined to rule for himself. Fearing her son's growing independence, Irene pressed too far when she demanded that her own name precede that of his in all public documents. A plot was then hatched to remove Irene from power and have her banished to Sicily, but she learned of this in time and had her son confined in the palace, demanding a direct oath of allegiance to herself from the military. Upon learning of this, the troops of the Armeniac theme (military province) rebelled, secured the liberation of the emperor, and excluded Irene and her entourage of eunuch supporters from the palace.


     Captured as he attempted to reach the East, where loyal troops might be secured, he was brought to the palace to the Porphyry Chamber, where he had been born but 27 years before. There, on August 15, 797, he was blinded at his mother's orders, a frequently practiced maneuver that by Byzantine norms rendered a member of the imperial family unfit to reign. Constantine would die shortly after his mutilation, which was probably conducted in such a way as to achieve this result.

    Although it was said of Irene that she had the mind of a man, she was not a competent ruler and much of her reign was dominated by the struggle between her favorite eunuchs. The army was demoralized and alienated by her conduct of affairs; the Arabs invaded Asia Minor as far as Ephesus and ravaged the frontier provinces until peace was obtained by the payment of a large tribute to the caliph, Harun al-Rashid. To curry favor with the masses, Irene reduced some taxes, especially in the capital, and abolished others, moves that were to prove ruinous coupled with the ravages experienced during the Arab invasion. In 802, Irene was finally overthrown by a palace coup led by Nicephorus, her own minister of finance. Realizing that her fall was final, Irene had the intelligence to step aside gracefully thereby perhaps saving herself from physical harm. Despite the dissatisfaction with her rule, however, Irene had many friends, especially among the monks who adored her, and she was allowed to live out the rest of her life in dignified exile on the island of Lesbos where she died in 803.

    Irene of Athens was one of the most ruthless, ambitious, and forceful women ever to hold a throne and, in her determination to prevent her son from reigning and her boldness in daring to become the first woman ever to hold the Roman throne, she ranks with Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt and Catherine the Great as a profound breaker with dynastic tradition. Her convocation of the Second Council of Nicaea laid the institutional foundation for the permanent restoration of the icons in the Greek Church and codified the intellectual arguments in favor of the iconophile position. Perhaps most important of all, Irene's usurpation of the throne provided the ideological justification for the coronation of Charlemagne the Great as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, an institution that was to survive and to trouble Europe until laid to rest by Napoleon. In this way, she changed the course of European history and left a recognizable seal upon it for a millennium after her death.

- from Answers.com