Maria of Alania - Second Marriage

Second Marriage

The new emperor Nikephoros' wife died shortly before his accession to the throne and he announced his intention to remarry, which triggered a fierce competition among all the unmarried girls of Constantinople, and even between Maria, her former mother-in-law Eudokia Makrembolitissa, and Eudokia's daughter Zoe. The new emperor was first inclined to marry Eudokia but Maria received a strong support of her Doukas in-laws, who convinced Nikephoros to select her because of her beauty and the benefits of having a foreign-born wife with no domestic relatives who could interfere in Nikephoros' rule. In addition, by this move Nikephoros would pacify the loyalists of the ousted Doukas.

Because Maria's first husband Michael was still alive, even as he was a monk, her marriage to the new emperor was considered adulterous by the Orthodox Church, and one of Maria's prominent supporters John Doukas even had to demote a priest who refused to perform the marriage and substitute him with another one who agreed to marry the couple in 1078. As part of the marriage deal, Maria was promised that her son Constantine would be named an heir to the empire but Nikephoros reneged on this promise at a later point. Despite this, during his reign Maria was treated as an equal and received enormous lands and property, with Nikephoros going as far as to give her brother, George II of Georgia, a title of a Caesar to acknowledge his close ties to the imperial family.