User:Gleonardos/The Palaeologian Dynasty. The Rise and Fall of Byzantium

“Michael VIII Palaeologos, The Liberator” is a historical novel about one of the most powerful personalities of the Byzantine times during one of the most important eras in Greek history, as it began to develop at the beginning of the Palaeologos’ reign in Byzantine. It’s a fictional biography of Michael VIII, Palaeologos, patriarch of the homonymous dynasty, the man who achieved the unthinkable for the time, thanks to his versatile, diabolic mind. The story begins with the disaster of the Fourth Crusade – an issue still engaging historical researchers – and ends with the Sicilian Vespertine, fomented, indirectly yet actively, by Michael. Between those two historic events stand the battle of Pelagonia and, of course, the retrieval of Constantinople by Palaeologos. It’s a fascinating book full of intrigues, passions and eroticism, as well as political, diplomatic and ecclesiastical background, battles over power that left their mark during the 13th century. It successfully combines fast pace and academic precision. “As a leader he has been both condemned and praised by many. Just as history demands. Alas to the leaders who pass unnoticed…” “… Michael entered and exited the typhoons of political and religious intolerance as an excellent conductor of political plot, a gifted opportunist, a great conspirator, a master of undermining tactics and subversive conspiracy, and, at the same time, as an ingenious man, strong, brave and a fighter. He had it inside him. How else were we to have survived unless we had such a leader?” “It is wise to judge whether a leader acted kind or unholy actions, after death. Still we need to consider the circumstances under which he acted…”

The Palaeologues. In this second historical saga novel, George Leonardos narrates the shocking, gruesome and hideous events of the civil wars among the Palaeologian Dynasty, which carved the path of no return towards the self-destination and the dissolution of the Eastern Roman Empire. Although a complete story in itself, the result of a thorough study of the historical details and human weakness which marked all “rulers” of the century before the fall of Constantinople, this book constitutes in a way as the sequel to his previous narrative “Michael Palaeologos – The Liberator”. This in hand historical novel brings to prominence in a most vivid and genial way, not only the heroic but also the vile events which dramatically influenced the life and future of the residents of the former Eastern Roman Empire. Events that were distorted whether it be deliberately or unintentionally voluntarily or involuntarily so as to contribute to the lethargy of the people for many generations to come. A historical novel, in which truth exceeds fantasy which was used by the writer only to facilitate comprehension of this novel. “Some time later amidst the cries and screams of the passengers and their children, the ship was sailing from the commercial pier of the gulf of Golden Horn with a few flexible close hauls heading in the wind our most experienced captain steering the ship towards the estuary of the gulf leaving behind him the Golden Horn and sailing towards Propontis when a tail wind from the side of Bosporus in the sea of Marmara took us under its wing, steering us towards Gallipoli towards the inlet of Ellispondos. The children thrilled to be traveling by boat, ran to the stern of the ship gazing into the horizon. A new life was ahead… I alone, abandoned from the others slowly went towards the stern of the ship to kneel before the imaginary temple of Hagia Sophia (Saint Sophia) and stare out to the life I had left behind…

The Laste Palaeologue. In this last part of his Palaeologue dynasty trilogy, the prize-winning novelist George Leonardos writes about the last Emperor of Byzantium, Constantine XI Palaeologos and the fall of Constantinople. Using Venetian, Greek and Turkish sources, Leonardos has created a vivid and exciting account of the last days of the Eastern Roman Empire, the new Rome. Leonardos’ novel grapples with the traditional views of modern Greek historiography on how the Byzantine Empire fell, and asks questions such as what really happened? What were the intrigues and machinations that played a part in the fall of the thousand-year-old empire? Who betrayed Constantine XI Palaeologos, raising the Ottoman standard at the Palace of Blachernae, as Constantine was fighting at the city walls for the very survival of his kingdom and Christendom in the East? The answers to these questions are set against the backdrop of the social upheaval and chaos of the late middle ages. With lively portrayals of the major players, Leonardos also relates what later became of the heroes of the day.

Sophia Palaeologina, by the best-selling author George Leonardos who has written fourteen novels, successful both in Greece and abroad, on the age of the Palaeologos Dynasty, traces the roots of the centuries-long, enduring and traditional bonds between Greece and Russia. From Greek Mystra to Catholic Rome, and from there to medieval Moscow, the life of Zoe-Sophia Palaeologina traces the collapse of one civilisation and the rise of a new one. Heir to the imperial titles of the Second Rome, vanquished Constantinople, the daring Byzantine princess managed to escape Vatican intrigues and, as the wife of Ivan III, create the Third Rome from the emerging Russian Empire. The first Tsarina in Russian history, the avowed enemy of the Tatars who had Russian lands under their yoke, comes alive in the pages of his new historical novel by Giorgos Leonardos, and sheds light on aspects of history that are not widely known. Historical scholarship, a thrilling adventure, a reminder of the true power of Orthodoxy and of Russia, in a plot that thunders forward like a juggernaut. The novel depicts the developing relations between the Byzantine Empire and the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The bonds strengthened after the marriage of Zoe-Sophia Palaeologos, niece of the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI Palaeologos who fell defending the City against the Ottoman invaders, to Ivan III the Great, himself a descendant of the Riurik Dynasty. With the help and at the instigation of his Greek consort, Ivan III managed to reject the Tatar yoke and unite the fragmented principalities and hegemonies under a large, and powerful central leadership, the predecessor to today’s Russia. Because of his marriage to Sophia Palaeologos, the sole heir to the Byzantine Empire, he also succeeded in making his state the heir to the vanquished and fragmented Eastern Roman Empire, and thus adopted the Empire’s symbols, such as the double-headed eagle, and also became a power in the Orthodox world, declaring Moscow the Third Rome, after Rome itself and Byzantium. The novel begins in Rome where Zoe Palaeologina was raised and describes the machinations of the Greek Orthodox and later Catholic Cardinal Bessarion and a series of Popes, the last of whom was Sixtus IV, to marry Zoe off to Ivan III, then Grand Duke of Moscow, so that she could convert the Russians to Catholicism. As soon as she planted her feet on Russian soil, Sophia’s Byzantine Orthodoxy awoke and she changed her name to Sophia, as the Russians considered the name Zoe to be Catholic. At Sophia’s instigation – she often nagged him that she had not “married to become a vassal of the Tatar infidels” – Ivan managed to overthrow Tatar hegemony over the Russian people, particularly after the bloodless confrontation in the Ugra River, and make his domains a powerful state. It was for this reason, as well as his patriotism and policies that Ivan III was proclaimed ‘the Great’, the first in Russian history. Ivan’s and Sophia’s grandson was Ivan the Terrible.