Theodora

Theodora was the Byzantine empress and wife of Justinian I. She played a visible role in government, famously supported resistance during the Nika revolt and was involved in religious and court politics; accounts of her early life are heavily shaped by Procopius’s hostility.

In David Pilling’s The Red Death, the Briton makes an enemy of the corrupt Empress of the East, Theodora, and falls into the clutches of Gelimer, the mad King of the Vandals. In Robert Graves’s Count Belisarius, Graves sets battlefield success against court suspicion in Constantinople, where Belisarius’s loyalty, his marriage to Antonina and his relationship with Justinian and Theodora shape his fate as much as his victories. Other novels featuring Theodora include William Havelock’s The Gates of Carthage and William Havelock’s An Age of Darkness and Light.

In non-fiction, Theodora is discussed in Nick Holmes’s Justinian’s Empire and Procopius’s The Secret History. In Nick Holmes’s Justinian’s Empire, Theodora and Procopius are central to an account of court politics, propaganda and the contested reputation of the emperor.