Nikephoros Diogenes
1069 – 1094 · Generation XXVIII · Co-emperor (r. 1071) · Doukas
Nikephoros Diogenes was born about 1069, a son of the emperor Romanos IV Diogenes and the empress Eudokia Makrembolitissa, who had married and been crowned on 1 January 1068. Born to a reigning emperor, he was porphyrogenitos, born in the purple. He and his brother Leo, possibly his twin, were made junior emperors as infants, while their elder half-brother Constantine, the son of Romanos’s first marriage, was left out of the succession. Both boys lost their rank in 1071, when Michael VII Doukas deposed their parents.
Alexios I Komnenos, who seized the throne in 1081, was said to treat the sons of Romanos as if they were his own. In the early 1090s he made Nikephoros governor, doux, of Crete. Nikephoros was strong, tall and fair, a head taller than his peers according to Anna Komnene, and as a son born in the purple he had a better claim to the throne than Alexios himself.
In 1094 he plotted to kill Alexios and take the crown. The conspiracy reached deep into the court, drawing in the former empress Maria of Alania, Alexios’s brother-in-law Michael Taronites and his own brother Adrianos Komnenos. Twice Nikephoros came close to striking: once a maid fanning mosquitoes from the sleeping emperor stood in his way, and once a guard stopped him. Alexios grew suspicious, had him arrested and, under torture, Nikephoros revealed the whole plot.
He was blinded, the usual Byzantine penalty for conspiracy, but Alexios restored most of his property. Nikephoros withdrew to his estates and spent his last years on classical literature and philosophy, read aloud to him, and even mastered geometry through models made in relief. Anna Komnene says he still nursed hopes of the throne and was once more denounced and pardoned. Nothing is heard of him afterwards.
One of 13 people of Doukas (1006–1303) in this archive. A great civil house that took the throne between the Macedonians and the Komnenoi.
Line of descent: Constantine Diogenes → Romanos IV Diogenes → Nikephoros Diogenes.
Parents
- Romanos IV Diogenes (1030 – 1072)
- Eudokia Makrembolitissa (1021 – 1096)
Siblings
- Michael VII Doukas (1050 – 1090) (half)
- Andronikos Doukas (1057 – 1077) (half)
- Konstantios Doukas (1060 – 1081) (half)
- Leo Diogenes (1069 – 1087)
Sources
- Nikephoros Diogenes · Wikipedia
- Romanos IV Diogenes · Wikipedia