Anna Of Byzantium

While Anna’s relationship with Dalassene was previously the focus of the book, Anna’s relationship with her mother begins to take center stage in these chapters. Irene’s defense of Anna during the trial is a brave show of support that no other family member is willing to make for Anna. She argues against John being named the heir to the throne by telling Alexios, “Anna is your firstborn; she is even named for your mother. She has been expecting the throne all her life […] She is more intelligent than that boy will ever be—he can’t even read, despite Simon’s many attempts to teach him. And Anna is not deceitful and malicious, the way he is!” (117). Such an outburst puts her own political standing at risk, but this vehemently defensive attitude reflects the historical record, in which “Anna seems to have been [Irene’s] favorite” (Byzantine Empresses 197). Anna’s attitude toward her mother has overtly shifted by this point, as she calls her “lovely” in this chapter. Amid these crucial moments in Anna’s character development, her blossoming relationship with her mother spurs her changing perspective on power and the Competing Definitions of Family. It becomes clear moving forward that Irene is trustworthy to Anna in a way her other family members are not.

Other figures also begin to emerge more clearly as Anna’s true allies—namely, Simon and Sophia—though Anna herself is still reluctant to accept their friendship. Of Sophia, she remarks, “I even would have said, if it had not sounded so absurd, that I liked her. I had to find some way to keep her with me” (134). Her desire to keep Sophia’s company is at odds with her stringent notions of social hierarchy, and she cannot reconcile the two. Simon, who has known Anna longer than Sophia, has the ability to soothe Anna with his lessons about history, but she is nevertheless reluctant to accept the messages that they send. When he relates the story of Kassia, for example, she refuses to see the wisdom in Kassia’s decision to spend her life in a convent. Her dismissal of the tutor’s wisdom despite how she seeks comfort from it is just as fraught as her mixed feelings about friendship with Sophia. These supportive figures that Anna sometimes fails to recognize are embodied by the figure of the guardian angel in Sophia’s favorite illuminated manuscript. Anna’s incredulous response to Sophia’s belief in angels reflects her seeming inability to see the helpful forces in her own life. Sophia, on the other hand, is more inclined to believe that she has helpful forces on her side, even if they are spiritual beings.

Some part of Anna, however, does begin to believe in the presence of real-life guardian angels. She wakes up with a start, having heard a noise, and asks herself, “What had I heard? Could it have been the rustle of angel wings overhead?” (158). Even if subconsciously, Anna’s hallucination of the angel sound indicates that she is aware that she has allies in her life. Consciously, though, she refuses to accept that any person or entity might be real: “I wondered why the psalm-book had pictured something that did not exist, and why my mother spoke of our guardian angel. All I could think was that everyone had lied, and that no one was watching over me” (159). This assertion has great irony, since it includes a mention of Irene, who is one of Anna’s figurative guardian angels. Anna’s tendency to understand figurative stories literally is a throughline of the book; for example, she fails to see how Icarus’s story applies to her life at all. In this case, it alienates those who love her.

Though the angels are beings that religious individuals like Irene believe in in a literal sense, they also have a poetic significance that can be appreciated in non-religious contexts. Irene, Sophia, and Simon all endeavor to support Anna in her time of great loss, but—like an invisible angel guiding one’s path—she fails to see them. This demonstrates her Lust for Power in a Religious Society, a trait instilled in her by Dalassene and the general political atmosphere. Even if her empire’s culture espouses a religiosity that Irene and Sophia believe in, Anna still sees these ideas as inconsequential and ephemeral in comparison to her present aspirations of obtaining power. Her stubborn ungratefulness, however, will be challenged as greater threats to her safety begin to occur and the support of these friends becomes a matter of life and death.