Anna Porphyrogenita, Byzantine princess and queen of the Rus’
Susana Torres Prieto
Anna Porphyrogenita is, despite her relevance for the history of Kievan Rus’, someone we know very little about, and even the order of the few facts we know about her life is still contested among historians. We know she was the sister of Basil II, the Byzantine emperor and so-called “Bulgar-slayer.” We know she married prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich – but historians disagree when or where – that she probably had no children (but the agreement is not unanimous on this point either) and that she died in Kiev, though the date is also disputed. Her paramount role in the history of Kievan Rus’ derives from the fact that her marriage to prince Vladimir symbolized the entry of the newly created polity within the orbit of Byzantium (politically, culturally, religiously) and, therefore, the entry of Kievan Rus’ in Christian history.
The present sketch is therefore based on the few historical facts that we know, without entering into the academic polemics but necessarily adopting one position against others, and, mostly, on what we know about material culture, about the cultural and social shock that for someone coming from Constantinople must have been to live among the Rus’. I have tried to underline the prominent role that she apparently kept, particularly in religious issues, despite not having apparently produced any surviving child.
I have adopted the form of a purported diary, a recollection of memories in the first person of someone who maybe, and only maybe, against her will, would contribute decisively to the change of the history of Kievan Rus’ for what she represented. This is, therefore, a highly novelized sketch, and it is, as such, highly personal and potentially contested. In order to avoid misleading any reader, I have clearly identified in notes those facts in the life of Anna that are attested in the sources. All details of realia are taken from secondary sources identified in the bibliography. The rest of the tale is my own.
Further Reading
Aside from the main original sources (The Chronicle of John Skylitzes, the Primary Chronicle, and Vladimir’s Statute), all available in various translations, I have drawn inspiration from Judith Herrin’s Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2001) about the ways of the Byzantine court near the times of Anna Porphyrogenita. Paul Stephenson’s The Legend of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) was very useful in looking at the question of Anna’s marriage from another perspective. For the historical framework and consequences of her entering Prince Vladimir’s court, I have mainly based my assumptions on Simon Franklin’s and Jonathan Shepard’s The Emergence of the Rus 750–1200 (London: Longman, 1996), as well as Christian Raffensperger’s Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus’ in the Medieval World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). For questions on dating of the marriage and Vladimir’s baptism, I have followed Pierre Gonneau and Aleksandr Lavorv’s Des Rhôs à la Russie: histoire de l’Europe orientale (v. 730–1689) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2012) as well as Vladimir Vodoff’s Naissance de la chrétienté russe: la conversion du prince Vladimir de Kiev (988) et ses consequences (XIe–XIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 1988). For a general idea of how Kiev must have looked like at the time, I drew inspiration on Véra Traimond’s Architecture de la Russie Ancienne, vol. 1: X–XV siècles (Paris: Hermann, 2003).