Alexius II Comnenus

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Alexius II Comnenus (September 10, 1169 – October 1183), Byzantine emperor (1180-1183), was the son of emperor Manuel I Comnenus and Maria, daughter of Raymund, prince of Antioch. He was the long-awaited male heir, and was named Alexius as a fulfilment of the AIMA prophecy.

On Manuel's death in 1180, Maria, whose Byzantine name was Xene, took the position of regent (according to some historians). She excluded her son from power, entrusting it instead to Alexius the protosebastos (a cousin of Alexius II), who was popularly believed to be her lover. Friends of the young Alexios now tried to form a party against the empress mother and the protosebastos; and his half-sister Maria, wife of Caesar John (Renier of Montferrat), stirred up riots in the streets of the capital.

Their party was defeated (May 2, 1182), but Andronicus Comnenus took advantage of these disorders to aim at the crown, entered Constantinople, where he was received with almost divine honours, and overthrew the government. His arrival was celebrated by a massacre of the Latins in Constantinople, especially the Venetian merchants, which he made no attempt to stop. He allowed Alexius to be crowned, but was responsible for the death of most of the young emperor's actual or potential defenders, including his mother, his sister and the Caesar, and refused to allow him the smallest voice in public affairs.

The betrothal in 1180 of Alexius to Agnes of France , daughter of Louis VII of France and his third wife Adèle of Champagne and at the time a child of nine, had not apparently been followed by their marriage. Andronicus was now formally proclaimed as co-emperor, and not long afterwards, on the pretext that divided rule was injurious to the Empire, he caused Alexius to be strangled with a bow-string (October 1183).

Portrayal in fiction

Alexius is a character in the historical novel Agnes of France (1980) by Greek writer Kostas Kyriazis (1920 - ). The novel describes the events of the reigns of Manuel I, Alexius II and Andronicus I through the eyes of Agnes.

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