Royal Mistress
The work Theophanes Continuatus was a continuation of the chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor by other writers, active during the reign of Constantine VII. According to it Zoe was first married to Theodore Gouniatzizes, an otherwise obscure member of the court. She became mistress to the Emperor after the death of her husband. Theophanes records Theodore being poisoned, implicating Leo VI in his early demise. Symeon Metaphrastes records Leo falling in love with her in the third year of his reign, placing their meeting c. 889. At the time Leo was married to Theophano, daughter of Constantine Martiniakos. Their marriage had been arranged by his father Basil I. They had a daughter but the marriage of Leo VI and Theophano seems to have been loveless.
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Famous quotes containing the words royal and/or mistress:
“Here was a royal fellowship of death.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The lover never sees personal resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or to others. His friends find in her a likeness to her mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)