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Description
English-speaking imaginations primarily remember Isaac Komnenos as just another side quest in the story of King Richard the Lionheart, a footnote who got his shit wrecked when he made the mistake of getting between Richard and the Third Crusade. 13th century Byzantine chronicler Niketas Choniates goes into a little more detail on the man's backstory, however, so we'll start there and work our way up to him getting his shit wrecked.

Our Isaac Komnenos was the grandson of yet another Isaac Komnenos, the first node in the very confusing web of several Isaacs and Komnenoses in this story. You… might wanna grab a notepad, I sure as hell needed to. That elder Isaac Komnenos was the brother of Emperor Manuel I, who despite screwing over his big brother for the throne, was a man who understood the value of keeping your enemies closer than your friends. Manuel hooked his grandnephew up with a solid gig as governor and military commander over Armenia and Tarsus, though when exactly is unclear. The appointment obviously must've been before Manuel’s death in 1180, but even by then, Niketas states that our Isaac had been captured in battle against the Armenians and then imprisoned in a fortress for several unspecified years, so that's really anyone's guess.

It wasn't Manuel's successor Alexios II who initially got Isaac out of that jail cell, nor that poor kid's successor Andronikos I, but rather the Knights Templar, who paid the upfront cost of Isaac's ransom. There was still a sum leftover to be paid, but thankfully that shouldn't have been all too hard given all the relatives Isaac had in extremely powerful positions. His aunt Theodora (wife of King Baldwin III of Jerusalem), his uncle Constantine Makrodoukas (a very influential nobleman in Andronikos’s court) and even his own childhood bestie Andronikos Doukas all urged Isaac to go to Emperor Andronikos and just ask for some quick cash to make the problem go away. It was, quite literally, easy money. Except hey, Isaac thought, you know what else would be easy money? What if I was emperor instead? Then I could pay off my ransom and have a whole treasury full of gold leftover to Scrooge McDuck into! I mean come on, overthrowing the emperor is basically the Roman equivalent of baseball at this point anyway, it can't be that hard.

And… well… it really wasn't that hard. Setting his plan in motion circa 1183, Isaac packed up all his shit and landed on the island of Cyprus, where he recited forged documents claiming that Andronikos had actually made him governor in a totally standard and 100% legal fashion, yes sir… you know, as if taking power in the Byzantine Empire had ever required legal justification before. It was a relatively nice gesture, but that's pretty much where Isaac's consideration for the social order ended. Niketas describes Isaac's tyranny over Cyprus as an era defined by unlawful torture and executions (“murders by the hour” as Niketas puts it), bedding of married women and despoiling of virgins, and theft of whatever treasure the indigenous Cypriots hadn't nailed down… and then probably the nails too with a resume like that.

Now, Emperor Andronikos wasn't exactly pleased with this development, and not because of all the murder and despoiling, mind you. No no, Andronikos was himself a debaucherous asshole who had an affinity for war crimes and problematically young ladies of the court. He was just worried that Isaac might be the one to come in and usurp his shiny hat, and he really liked his shiny hat! In his paranoia, Andronikos rounded up Constantine Makrodoukas and Andronikos Doukas to have them blinded (the typical punishment for traitors in Byzantium), despite the fact that both of them were insistent that “hey dude, we tried to tell him he had better options”. Hilariously, realizing his goose was cooked anyway and being well-versed in historical torture methods, Doukas decided to go out like a total badass by critiquing each of Andronikos’s increasingly brutal execution proposals like “pffft bruh I've seen better, come on, give me something worse”. Evidently, this Bugs Bunny routine kept him alive until Easter 1184, at which point the two were dragged before a counsel, stoned within an inch of death, then paraded through the streets where they were impaled for public display until the last breath was bled out of them. Jaysus.

The citizens of Constantinople were understandably horrified by this blatant cruelty but again, Andronikos couldn't be bothered to worry about such trifles as “reputation” and “basic human decency”. In September 1185, he consulted a blind soothsayer named Seth, who divined from methods which Niketas hilariously “would rather neither learn nor describe” that the letter “iota” would be the herald of Andronikos's downfall before the 14th of the month. Andronikos naturally took this to refer to Isaac, and initially laughed the soothsayer off because it would be physically impossible for Isaac to sail all the way from Cyprus and usurp him before the 14th. In classic Greek tragedy fashion, however, the prophecy came true, just not in the way Andronikos had interpreted it. It was not Isaac Komnenos who would overthrow Andronikos, but Isaac Angelos, a cousin from another branch of the imperial family who'd escaped arrest and incited a lynch mob to tear Andronikos a new asshole.

Now Isaac Angelos knew that having two Isaacs running around calling themselves emperor at the same time would just be plain confusing for future historians, so something really needed to be done about that. Angelos assembled a fleet of 70 longships with John Kontostephanos and Alexios Komnenos at their heads. Now, John was getting on I'm years and Alexios had previously had his eyes gouged out, so the army's confidence was just… ya know, a little bit put off, but the voyage to Cyprus ended up being extremely smooth and without incident. The devastating thunderstorm typical of naval transport politely waited until they reached the harbor to absolutely wreck their shit. Isaac engaged the battered army on the beach, while the Roman ships were destroyed by the dread pirate Megareites who just sort of decided on a whim to give Isaac Komnenos a hand. John and Alexios surrendered almost immediately like little bitches. Following the battle, Isaac took his pick of POWs to conscript and/or torture, and the rest he gave to Megareites to “do with them as he wished”. Yarg.

This failure convinced Isaac Angelos that he had more pressing matters to throw resources at, so from this point on, Isaac Komnenos was more or less able to continue going about his business of pillaging whatever he pleased. His strategy of just robbing everything from shore to shore massively backfired in May 1191, though, when on one of those shores wrecked two smokin’ hot babes whom Isaac decided were his now. This dick move was the biggest mistake of his career, because those two babes were Berengaria of Navarre and Joan of England, the fiance and sister respectively of King Richard the Lionheart, and when you piss off Richard the Lionheart, you're gonna get your entire island burnt down. By June, Richard's warpath had completely undone any semblance of authority Isaac had left over Cyprus, and the wannabe emperor himself was captured and put in silver chains. Silver, because he'd chosen his words very poorly when he begged Richard not to put him in “irons”. Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, Garnier de Nablus, erged Richard to be more merciful than was characteristic of the king, and Richard relented, disposing of this trash by shipping him off to be imprisoned and supervised by the Knights Hospitaller in Margat. Having no need for Cyprus itself, Richard sold the island to the Knights Templar for some quick cash to finance his crusade against Saladin. The Templars spent their entire reign on Cyprus sucking taxes out of the populace, though, so the Cypriots finally decided they'd had enough and revolted. The Templars evacuated, went whining to Richard with their tails between their legs, and so Richard bought the island back, only to sell it off to the disinherited king of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, in May 1192.

As for Isaac himself, his release was orchestrated in 1194 as part of the ransom for King Richard, who had become a prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor on his way home from the Levant. By this point, rumor had already gotten around that Isaac had died in captivity, and frankly everyone in Byzantium had bigger things to worry about anyway, since Emperor Isaac Angelos was overthrown by his brother Alexios in 1195. Initially, Alexios was advised by his wife Euphrosyne (a relative of Isaac Komnenos) to try and bring Isaac back into the fold. When Alexios sent letters of recall to Isaac's pad in Kaykhusraw's Ikonion, however, Isaac basically said “shuddup ur not the boss of me!” and then started trying to rally support from the Seljuks to usurp Alexios. The Turks wanted nothing to do with this little bitch, though, so Isaac just sort of bumbled around the Sultanate of Rum trying to find anyone who actually liked him until Alexios just bribed his cupbearer to poison the little weasel and rid the world of this obnoxious pest once and for all.

Design notes, I went into this one expecting not to find a wealth of reference images to draw from. I mean, Isaac Komnenos is a pretty D-list character in the Third Crusade. To my pleasant surprise, though, apparently there's a shitload of coins minted during his tyranny over Cyprus. While coins aren't especially detailed, they do provide general shapes and facial features to expand upon. There's also a lot of 19th century illustrations out there, all of which exclusively (and hilariously) depict Isaac on his knees begging Richard to stop breaking all his shit like a little bitch. I ended up referencing those particular images very minimally though, with most of the minor details coming out of a 1777 woodcut by Robert Sayer and John Bennett. Really I didn't reference much of anything that came out of Richard’s perspective. There was a bit of a rabbit hole I stumbled down, cause if you go on the Wikipedia page for Isaac Komnenos, you'll see a footnote saying that the flag of the English city of Portsmouth bears a sigil which was taken by Richard from Isaac's own coat of arms. I could not for the life of me provenance this claim. Whenever I looked up the arms of Portsmouth, the explanation was always instead that that symbol came from the arms of William de Longchamp. In either case, whenever I tried to dig further, it just seemed like every article was just referencing one another, so I got frustrated and gave up. If anyone has a primary source for either of these claims, I'm more than happy to review it and scratch that itch, but in the end I decided it didn't need to be incorporated into this design anyway. The only aspect I kept was the blue color scheme, since I figured it would help Isaac stand out more as a challenger to the standard purple. I think it served its purpose quite well. It's a simple piece, but a solid one.

Description
English-speaking imaginations primarily remember Isaac Komnenos as just another side quest in the story of King Richard the Lionheart, a footnote who got his shit wrecked when he made the mistake of getting between Richard and the Third Crusade. 13th century Byzantine chronicler Niketas Choniates goes into a little more detail on the man's backstory, however, so we'll start there and work our way up to him getting his shit wrecked.

Our Isaac Komnenos was the grandson of yet another Isaac Komnenos, the first node in the very confusing web of several Isaacs and Komnenoses in this story. You… might wanna grab a notepad, I sure as hell needed to. That elder Isaac Komnenos was the brother of Emperor Manuel I, who despite screwing over his big brother for the throne, was a man who understood the value of keeping your enemies closer than your friends. Manuel hooked his grandnephew up with a solid gig as governor and military commander over Armenia and Tarsus, though when exactly is unclear. The appointment obviously must've been before Manuel’s death in 1180, but even by then, Niketas states that our Isaac had been captured in battle against the Armenians and then imprisoned in a fortress for several unspecified years, so that's really anyone's guess.

It wasn't Manuel's successor Alexios II who initially got Isaac out of that jail cell, nor that poor kid's successor Andronikos I, but rather the Knights Templar, who paid the upfront cost of Isaac's ransom. There was still a sum leftover to be paid, but thankfully that shouldn't have been all too hard given all the relatives Isaac had in extremely powerful positions. His aunt Theodora (wife of King Baldwin III of Jerusalem), his uncle Constantine Makrodoukas (a very influential nobleman in Andronikos’s court) and even his own childhood bestie Andronikos Doukas all urged Isaac to go to Emperor Andronikos and just ask for some quick cash to make the problem go away. It was, quite literally, easy money. Except hey, Isaac thought, you know what else would be easy money? What if I was emperor instead? Then I could pay off my ransom and have a whole treasury full of gold leftover to Scrooge McDuck into! I mean come on, overthrowing the emperor is basically the Roman equivalent of baseball at this point anyway, it can't be that hard.

And… well… it really wasn't that hard. Setting his plan in motion circa 1183, Isaac packed up all his shit and landed on the island of Cyprus, where he recited forged documents claiming that Andronikos had actually made him governor in a totally standard and 100% legal fashion, yes sir… you know, as if taking power in the Byzantine Empire had ever required legal justification before. It was a relatively nice gesture, but that's pretty much where Isaac's consideration for the social order ended. Niketas describes Isaac's tyranny over Cyprus as an era defined by unlawful torture and executions (“murders by the hour” as Niketas puts it), bedding of married women and despoiling of virgins, and theft of whatever treasure the indigenous Cypriots hadn't nailed down… and then probably the nails too with a resume like that.

Now, Emperor Andronikos wasn't exactly pleased with this development, and not because of all the murder and despoiling, mind you. No no, Andronikos was himself a debaucherous asshole who had an affinity for war crimes and problematically young ladies of the court. He was just worried that Isaac might be the one to come in and usurp his shiny hat, and he really liked his shiny hat! In his paranoia, Andronikos rounded up Constantine Makrodoukas and Andronikos Doukas to have them blinded (the typical punishment for traitors in Byzantium), despite the fact that both of them were insistent that “hey dude, we tried to tell him he had better options”. Hilariously, realizing his goose was cooked anyway and being well-versed in historical torture methods, Doukas decided to go out like a total badass by critiquing each of Andronikos’s increasingly brutal execution proposals like “pffft bruh I've seen better, come on, give me something worse”. Evidently, this Bugs Bunny routine kept him alive until Easter 1184, at which point the two were dragged before a counsel, stoned within an inch of death, then paraded through the streets where they were impaled for public display until the last breath was bled out of them. Jaysus.

The citizens of Constantinople were understandably horrified by this blatant cruelty but again, Andronikos couldn't be bothered to worry about such trifles as “reputation” and “basic human decency”. In September 1185, he consulted a blind soothsayer named Seth, who divined from methods which Niketas hilariously “would rather neither learn nor describe” that the letter “iota” would be the herald of Andronikos's downfall before the 14th of the month. Andronikos naturally took this to refer to Isaac, and initially laughed the soothsayer off because it would be physically impossible for Isaac to sail all the way from Cyprus and usurp him before the 14th. In classic Greek tragedy fashion, however, the prophecy came true, just not in the way Andronikos had interpreted it. It was not Isaac Komnenos who would overthrow Andronikos, but Isaac Angelos, a cousin from another branch of the imperial family who'd escaped arrest and incited a lynch mob to tear Andronikos a new asshole.

Now Isaac Angelos knew that having two Isaacs running around calling themselves emperor at the same time would just be plain confusing for future historians, so something really needed to be done about that. Angelos assembled a fleet of 70 longships with John Kontostephanos and Alexios Komnenos at their heads. Now, John was getting on I'm years and Alexios had previously had his eyes gouged out, so the army's confidence was just… ya know, a little bit put off, but the voyage to Cyprus ended up being extremely smooth and without incident. The devastating thunderstorm typical of naval transport politely waited until they reached the harbor to absolutely wreck their shit. Isaac engaged the battered army on the beach, while the Roman ships were destroyed by the dread pirate Megareites who just sort of decided on a whim to give Isaac Komnenos a hand. John and Alexios surrendered almost immediately like little bitches. Following the battle, Isaac took his pick of POWs to conscript and/or torture, and the rest he gave to Megareites to “do with them as he wished”. Yarg.

This failure convinced Isaac Angelos that he had more pressing matters to throw resources at, so from this point on, Isaac Komnenos was more or less able to continue going about his business of pillaging whatever he pleased. His strategy of just robbing everything from shore to shore massively backfired in May 1191, though, when on one of those shores wrecked two smokin’ hot babes whom Isaac decided were his now. This dick move was the biggest mistake of his career, because those two babes were Berengaria of Navarre and Joan of England, the fiance and sister respectively of King Richard the Lionheart, and when you piss off Richard the Lionheart, you're gonna get your entire island burnt down. By June, Richard's warpath had completely undone any semblance of authority Isaac had left over Cyprus, and the wannabe emperor himself was captured and put in silver chains. Silver, because he'd chosen his words very poorly when he begged Richard not to put him in “irons”. Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, Garnier de Nablus, erged Richard to be more merciful than was characteristic of the king, and Richard relented, disposing of this trash by shipping him off to be imprisoned and supervised by the Knights Hospitaller in Margat. Having no need for Cyprus itself, Richard sold the island to the Knights Templar for some quick cash to finance his crusade against Saladin. The Templars spent their entire reign on Cyprus sucking taxes out of the populace, though, so the Cypriots finally decided they'd had enough and revolted. The Templars evacuated, went whining to Richard with their tails between their legs, and so Richard bought the island back, only to sell it off to the disinherited king of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, in May 1192.

As for Isaac himself, his release was orchestrated in 1194 as part of the ransom for King Richard, who had become a prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor on his way home from the Levant. By this point, rumor had already gotten around that Isaac had died in captivity, and frankly everyone in Byzantium had bigger things to worry about anyway, since Emperor Isaac Angelos was overthrown by his brother Alexios in 1195. Initially, Alexios was advised by his wife Euphrosyne (a relative of Isaac Komnenos) to try and bring Isaac back into the fold. When Alexios sent letters of recall to Isaac's pad in Kaykhusraw's Ikonion, however, Isaac basically said “shuddup ur not the boss of me!” and then started trying to rally support from the Seljuks to usurp Alexios. The Turks wanted nothing to do with this little bitch, though, so Isaac just sort of bumbled around the Sultanate of Rum trying to find anyone who actually liked him until Alexios just bribed his cupbearer to poison the little weasel and rid the world of this obnoxious pest once and for all.

Design notes, I went into this one expecting not to find a wealth of reference images to draw from. I mean, Isaac Komnenos is a pretty D-list character in the Third Crusade. To my pleasant surprise, though, apparently there's a shitload of coins minted during his tyranny over Cyprus. While coins aren't especially detailed, they do provide general shapes and facial features to expand upon. There's also a lot of 19th century illustrations out there, all of which exclusively (and hilariously) depict Isaac on his knees begging Richard to stop breaking all his shit like a little bitch. I ended up referencing those particular images very minimally though, with most of the minor details coming out of a 1777 woodcut by Robert Sayer and John Bennett. Really I didn't reference much of anything that came out of Richard’s perspective. There was a bit of a rabbit hole I stumbled down, cause if you go on the Wikipedia page for Isaac Komnenos, you'll see a footnote saying that the flag of the English city of Portsmouth bears a sigil which was taken by Richard from Isaac's own coat of arms. I could not for the life of me provenance this claim. Whenever I looked up the arms of Portsmouth, the explanation was always instead that that symbol came from the arms of William de Longchamp. In either case, whenever I tried to dig further, it just seemed like every article was just referencing one another, so I got frustrated and gave up. If anyone has a primary source for either of these claims, I'm more than happy to review it and scratch that itch, but in the end I decided it didn't need to be incorporated into this design anyway. The only aspect I kept was the blue color scheme, since I figured it would help Isaac stand out more as a challenger to the standard purple. I think it served its purpose quite well. It's a simple piece, but a solid one.