![]() ![]() was regal in her ways, a woman of great beauty, most imposing in her manner and commanding respect…was a woman of passionate interests, prepared with equal enthusiasm for both alternatives, death or life, I mean. ![]() Instead, Zoe returned home to spend the next 27 years in the seclusion of the Great Palace of Constantinople, but her time would come. It was one of those moments in history of “what might have been?”, if the imperial families of the two great empires of the west had been united. Zoe, then 23 and said to have been a great beauty, set sail in 1001 CE from Constantinople, but on arrival at Bari, she was given the sad news that Otto had died of fever. 976-1025 CE) promised her in a marriage of alliance to Otto III (r. ![]() She first appears on the stage of history when her uncle emperor Basil II (r. 978 CE, one of three daughters of Constantine VIII (r. Zoe is the subject of a colourful and somewhat unflattering biography in the Chronographia of the 11th-century CE Byzantine historian Michael Psellos. In an eventful career, she reigned alongside three husbands, had a hand in the succession of her adopted son, and, in 1042 CE, she was co-ruler with her sister Theodora. Zoe Porphyrogenita was empress of the Byzantine Empire from 1028 CE until her death in 1050 CE. ![]()
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