Byzantium

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In the first half of the eleventh century, while Europe lumbered fitfully towards the end of the Dark Ages, the Byzantine Empire stood at the apex of its power. Direct heir to the might and glory of ancient Rome, the Empire of Byzantium already could look back on seven uninterrupted centuries of world dominion. The hub of this enduring and seemingly invincible power was Constantinople, the magnificent fortress capital founded in AD 330 by Constantine I, the first Christian Emperor of Rome. Invulnerable behind miles of towering walls, the Queen of Cities was a luxurious metropolis of a million inhabitants at a time when London and Paris were squalid, overgrown villages of ten or twenty thousand.

Presiding over the splendour of Byzantium was the most powerful man on earth. Lord of the Entire World, the Byzantine Emperor was thought to rule literally side by side with the Lord of the Universe, Christ the Pantocrator. But the Emperor’s divine prerogative was coveted by many, and this all-too-fallible mortal often feared for his life even in the staggeringly opulent sanctuaries of his vast palace complex. For this reason the Byzantine emperors surrounded themselves with an Imperial bodyguard of Viking mercenaries, men of unquestioning loyalty and unyielding ferocity. Known and feared throughout the world as Varangians, these few hundred Viking warriors became essential to the stability and survival of the world’s mightiest empire.

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