Martina

595 – ? · Generation XII · Empress

Martina. Empress. Married Heraclius around AD 623. Niece of Heraclius (daughter of his sister Maria); regent 641. Her marriage to her uncle — placed by one chronicler no later than 613, by another in the 620s — counted as incest under church law and scandalised Constantinople, yet Patriarch Sergius crowned her augusta. The couple were close: she shared Heraclius’s hardest campaigns against Persia and was with him at Antioch when news came of the Yarmuk disaster in 636. At least two of their children were disabled, which critics took as divine punishment. On Heraclius’s death in 641 she read his will in the Hippodrome and claimed supreme authority, but the crowd acclaimed only the two emperors. When her stepson Constantine III died months later, rumour accused her of poisoning him. Ruling through her son Heraclonas, she revived monothelitism, but the army and Senate turned on her; late in 641 her tongue was slit and her sons mutilated, and all were exiled to Rhodes.

Partners

Married Heraclius (575 – 641) in 623 — 2 children together

Children

Heraclonas (626 – 641)
David Tiberius (630 – ?)

Life

595 — Born
623 — Married Heraclius