Maria

1145 – 1182 · Generation XXX · Empress

Maria (AD 1145 – 1182). Empress. Married Manuel around AD 1161. Wife of Manuel I; mother of Alexios II; regent then executed. Daughter of Raymond of Poitiers and Constance of Antioch, she was chosen over Melisende of Tripoli when Manuel sought a bride from the crusader states, and the match bound Antioch more closely to the empire. Contemporaries praised her fair-haired beauty. After years without an heir and a miscarriage in 1166, she bore Alexios II in 1169. Her native French let her detect a court interpreter secretly advising westerners, and Manuel had the man blinded. Widowed in 1180, she took the veil as Xene but governed for her son, leaning on the protosebastos Alexios Komnenos, reputed to be her lover; her regency, seen as favouring the Latins, was widely resented. After Andronikos Komnenos seized Constantinople in 1182 she was imprisoned, and once the boy emperor had been made to sign her death warrant she was strangled and buried in an unmarked grave on the shore.

Place in the family

Maria married Manuel I Komnenos, a grandson of Alexios I Komnenos.

Partners

Married Manuel I Komnenos (1118 – 1180) in 1161 — one child together

Children

Alexios II Komnenos (1169 – 1183)

Life

1145 — Born
1161 — Married Manuel
1182 — Died