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Why Was the Byzantine Throne Never Truly Inherited? - The Assembled Emperor: Power and Legitimacy in Byzantium | Sleepy Facts About History
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The Byzantine Empire endured for eleven centuries not because it solved the problem of succession, but because it turned that unsolved problem into a system. When an emperor died, the throne was never automatically inherited. Instead, legitimacy had to be assembled from multiple sources. A claimant needed military backing, the support of the Constantinopolitan crowd, and the sacred sanction of the patriarchal coronation in Hagia Sophia. This episode examines how the Byzantine emperor was…
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