Alexios II Komnenos
1169 – 1183 · Generation XXXI · Emperor (r. 1180–1183) · Komnenos
Alexios (AD 1169 – 1183). Emperor (r. 1180–1183). Son of Manuel I; murdered by Andronikos I. Emperor as a boy, he reigned without ever ruling. Power lay first with his mother the dowager empress and her favourite, the protosebastos Alexios, whose regency drained the treasury on privileges for Italian merchants and the aristocracy while Hungary and the Seljuks raided the borders. Unrest in the capital opened the way for Andronikos Komnenos, whose arrival in 1182 was celebrated with a massacre of the city's Latins. Though formally restored to his throne, the boy counted for nothing under his new protector: he was made to sign his own mother's death sentence, and in September 1183, with Andronikos proclaimed emperor, he was quietly murdered and his body sunk in the Bosporos. For years afterwards, pretenders who resembled him surfaced to claim his throne.
One of 14 people of Komnenos (1081–1185) in this archive. The house of the Komnenian restoration, ruling through a web of marriages to its own kin.
Line of descent: Manuel Komnenos → John Komnenos → Alexios I Komnenos → John II Komnenos → Manuel I Komnenos → Alexios II Komnenos.
Parents
- Manuel I Komnenos (1118 – 1180)
- Maria (1145 – 1182)