Marguerite-Marie de Hongrie, impératrice byzantine et reine latine de Salonique (1185–1223)
Marguerite-Marie of Hungary, Byzantine Empress and Latin Queen of Salonika (1185–1223)

Summary/Abstract: Marguerite-Marie of Hungary had an unusual fate. After she arrived in Constantinople in 1185, at the age of ten, she became Empress of Byzantium. Her marriage was celebrated in a rhetorical play but her role was minor. In 1195, she was deposed along with her husband Isaac II. It was the crusade of 1204 that pulled her from oblivion and restored her to the throne for a few months. After the death of her husband, she married Boniface de Montferrat in May 1204 and became Queen of Thessalonike. When Boniface died in his turn three years later, she became regent of the city in the name of her son Demetrius. This ex-empress of Constantinople, as offi cial documents continue to call her, was also “domina” and “epitrope” of the kingdom of Thessalonike. She had to face both Lombard opponents and supporters of the Catholic Church revealing her skills as diplomat but also her complex personality. Theodore’s invasion of Epirus precipitated her return to Hungary in 1223 where she died in 1229.

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