Irene of Athens

Irene of Athens was a Byzantine empress who rose from consort of Leo IV to regent for their young son Constantine VI and eventually sole ruler of the empire. After Leo’s death in 780 she governed for Constantine and became closely associated with the restoration of icon veneration. The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 reversed the official iconoclast policy of earlier Isaurian emperors and became a defining event in the history of Byzantine Christianity.

Relations between Irene and Constantine deteriorated as he tried to exercise independent authority. After periods of rivalry and reconciliation, Irene’s supporters seized Constantine in 797 and blinded him; he disappears from reliable political record thereafter. Irene then ruled in her own name until a palace coup placed Nikephoros I on the throne in 802. Her reign also overlapped with Charlemagne’s imperial coronation in 800, intensifying arguments over Roman imperial legitimacy. Exiled first to Prinkipo and then Lesbos, Irene died in 803.

Cecelia Holland’s The Belt of Gold uses Irene’s Constantinople as a setting for court intrigue, while H. Rider Haggard’s The Wanderer’s Necklace draws on the violent politics surrounding her reign. Matthew Harffy’s Dominion of Dust also engages with the Byzantine world of Irene’s era. Nick Holmes’s non-fiction The Inheritors of Rome places her government within the wider transformation of post-Roman Europe and the Mediterranean.