Irene Doukaina
1066 – 1138 · Generation XXVIII · Empress · Komnenos
Irene (AD 1066 – 1138). Empress. Married Alexios around AD 1078. Wife of Alexios I; granddaughter of Caesar John Doukas. Her parents were Andronikos Doukas, a nephew of Constantine X, and Maria of Bulgaria. She was only eleven at her wedding, and the match brought the Doukas clan behind Alexios in 1081 — yet her mother-in-law, Anna Dalassene, kept her from the coronation, and she was crowned a week after her husband only through her family’s pressure on the patriarch. Long overshadowed, she gained influence as Alexios aged, travelling with him on campaign as nurse and watchful guard, and taking over the civil government when illness disabled him around 1112. She urged him repeatedly to make her daughter Anna and son-in-law Nikephoros Bryennios his heirs instead of her son John, and after 1118 plotted against John without success. Sent into gentle exile at the Kecharitomene convent she had founded, she spent her last two decades in charity and literary patronage, dying in 1138.
Place in the family
- The archive records 43 of her descendants, across 13 generations.
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: John Doukas → Andronikos Doukas → Irene Doukaina.
Parents
- Andronikos Doukas (1045 – 1077)
Partners
- Married Alexios I Komnenos (1057 – 1118) in 1078 — 4 children together
Children
- John II Komnenos (1087 – 1143)
- Anna Komnene (1083 – 1153)
- Isaac Komnenos (1093 – 1152)
- Theodora Komnene (1096 – ?)
Life
- 1066 — Born
- 1078 — Married Alexios
- 1138 — Died