Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium, episode 192, Feeling Blank.

Last time we covered the brief reign of Isaac Komni-Nos, who tried to cut down on domestic

spending in order to address the financial crisis afflicting the empire. Isaac's goal was

to restore funds to the army, whose pay had been cut via the debasement of the gold currency.

When Isaac fell ill he nominated his friend and fellow general Constantine Dukas to be his

replacement. Over the course of the next eight years, Turkic raids smashed across the eastern

borderlands, sacking both Melatine and Annie, two of Byzantiums most important frontier cities.

Strangely though, the sources remain largely silent about the emperor's response to this menace.

What was going on back in the palace was Dukas asleep at the wheel or had he chosen not to react

for some other reason. Constantine Dukas is something of a mystery to us. The Dukas clan were an

established eastern military family with a base in Paflegonia. For those of you who are binge listening,

he does seem to be descended from the same Dukas family who rebelled under Leo VI and FYI in Greek

that name should sound more like Dukas, but I'll continue with the pronunciation we've established.

We're told that Constantine X was in his early 50s when he became emperor,

but there's little else said about him. Presumably he was a general, but we've yet to find any

evidence of where or when he served. So we have a man with a similar background, at a similar age

to his friend and predecessor, Isaac Korninos, and yet the vigour and martial spirit that Isaac

demonstrated seemed to dissipate once Dukas took over. The identity of our new emperors

gives us our first clue about this dichotomy. She was Euf Thokia, Makrem Volitisia,

and she will play a big part in our story in the coming years. For now all we need to know is that

she was the niece of the recently deposed patriarch Michael Kyrularius. As we talked about last time,

Isaac had gone after some of the financial privileges of the church and had then forced the

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