This is true, this is real, this is Straight Edge

Back in Constantinople, calamity followed rebellion followed scandal. As Choniates tells us, the empress Euphrosyne became obsessed with fortune-telling and in her "mad delusions and excessive zeal" she had many statues beheaded and had the snout of a bronze boar that stood in the Hippodrome cut off. She even tried to have the back of the famous statue of Herakles lashed for some obscure occultish purpose.
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By spring 1195, things had come to a breaking point. Constantinople was wracked with revolt after revolt as pretenders strove to clamber over the bodies of most of their relatives to seize the imperial throne. Bulgars, Vlakhs, Kumans, and Serbs all rampaged across the borders, headbutting and pantsing anyone in their way. The German army had carved a bloody, burning path through the empire. Isaakios II, for his part, was absolutely certain that he had been ordained emperor by God Almighty, and he hung on the every word of his priest and astrologer, Dositheos, who purported to fortell the future by means of consulting "demons who inspire dreams, the shapes of future events and certain apparitions from Solomonic books". Dositheos was despised, even moreso after Isaakios II tried to make him patriarch ¹.

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Alexios Vranas, a wizened military veteran "short in stature", but gifted with intelligence and cunning, as Niketas Choniates tells us, had commandeered the army Isaakios II had sent him to fight the rebellious Vlakhs and Bulgars. He now marched on Constantinople, determined to liberate Constantinople from Isaakios II and liberate Isaakios II from his life.

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LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAAAAIN

ITS JUST A JUMP TO THE LEFT

The year is 1185, the place: Constantinople. So our sordid tale contines with Andronikos I Komnenos as master of the Byzantine Empire, dawdling his child-bride on his knee, and in his off hours making steady progress on thinning out the hordes of younger Komnenoi.

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Last episode, Emperor Manuel died, leaving a power vacuum in Constantinople that his big bad cousin, Andronikos Komnenos, is eager to fill.

( oh shit son )

Now I'd like to pause and explain the AIMA prophecy.

Manuel was mad about prophecies and astrology and all manner of woo-woo; he was a very superstitious man and he saw signs and portents in everything. The time he didn't spend in bed with his niece or dodging assassins was spent holding crystals and trying to contact his 'spirit animal'. The AIMA prophecy, ascribed to someone called 'Leo the Wise', who really should've been called 'Leo the Jackass' for the amount of bloodshed and tragedy he'd cause, went thusly: the initial letter of the name of each Byzantine emperor would spell the word aima (Greek for blood), a sequence destined to repeat over and over. So far the sequence had gone as follows:

A: Alexios I
I: Ioannes II
M: Manuel

So they needed another A to fulfil the prophecy and start the sequence over again. Now Manuel had many sleepless nights over this, because he and Bertha had failed to produce a son. Despite years of enjoying the finest vaginas the Byzantine empire had to offer, Manuel was without an heir. Undaunted, he resolved to name every potential heir with an A name to make sure the prophecy would come to pass, one way or another. When his niece Theodora gave birth to a son, Manuel named him Alexios. When he betrothed his daughter Maria Porphyrogenita to Prince Béla of Hungary, Manuel had Béla renamed Alexios too, just in case.

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