Constantine XI Died Without an Heir. His Three Failed Marriages May Have Doomed Byzantium
Today marks 573 years since the fall of Constantinople. The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, died on May 29, 1453, without a wife and without an heir, and the story of how that happened is one of the strangest in Greek history.
Constantine married twice and lost both wives during pregnancy. His first marriage, in July 1428, was to Magdalene Tocco, niece of a Latin ruler of western Greece. She converted to Orthodoxy, took the name Theodora, and died just a year later in Achaea while pregnant. Constantine was 23 at the time and received the city of Glarentza in the Peloponnese as her dowry.
Mara had raised Mehmed II, and historians believe her marriage to Constantine might have stopped the siege entirely.
He refused to remarry for 12 years. His mother Helena eventually forced the issue, because if Constantine died without a male heir, the Palaiologos dynasty faced extinction. In 1441 he married Caterina Gattilusio, daughter of the Latin ruler of Lesbos. On a sea voyage to Constantinople, caught in a storm near Lemnos and attacked by a Turkish fleet, Caterina suffered a miscarriage and died from complications in 1443.
After that, his close adviser George Sphrantzes spent years searching for a bride across Spain, Italy, Portugal, and eventually the East. Three serious prospects emerged and all three fell apart. Negotiations with a daughter of the Doge of Venice collapsed when Byzantine nobles refused to accept a Catholic empress. A proposal to Mara Brankovic, the widow of Sultan Murad II, was rejected because she had vowed to enter a convent if freed from Muslim captivity. That one carried particular weight because Mara had raised Mehmed II, and historians believe her marriage to Constantine might have stopped the siege entirely.
The third and final prospect was a princess from Iberia, present-day Georgia. Constantine signed a formal agreement in September 1451, and by spring 1452 Sphrantzes was preparing to escort her to Constantinople. Before she arrived, Mehmed began his siege. The wedding was cancelled. The princess never reached the city.
