Empress
Anastasia enters historical record when her husband Constantine IV succeeds to the throne in 668. On September 15, 668, her father-in-law Constans II was assassinated in his bath by his chamberlain. He resided for the last few years of his reign in Syracuse, while Constantine and Theodora remained in Constantinople.
Anastasia became the senior Empress consort when news of the assassination reached the court. The birth of her first son, Justinian II, can be estimated to 668/669 due to the chronologies of Theophanes the Confessor and Ecumenical Patriarch Nikephoros I of Constantinople. A reference in De Administrando Imperio by Constantine VII, places the birth in Cyprus.
Her only other son mentioned is named as Heraclius in the Liber Pontificalis. The entry on Pope Benedict II (term 26 June 684 – 8 May 685), mentions the Pope receiving locks of hair from both Justinian and Heraclius, presumably as a gesture of goodwill by their father.
Constantine IV died of dysentery in September, 685. Anastasia is known to have survived him by more than two decades.
Read more about this topic: Anastasia (wife Of Constantine IV)
Famous quotes containing the word empress:
“We never really are the adults we pretend to be. We wear the mask and perhaps the clothes and posture of grown-ups, but inside our skin we are never as wise or as sure or as strong as we want to convince ourselves and others we are. We may fool all the rest of the people all of the time, but we never fool our parents. They can see behind the mask of adulthood. To her mommy and daddy, the empress never has on any clothes—and knows it.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“The Empress is Legitimist, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.”
—Napoleon Bonaparte III (1808–1873)