I try to keep the “Byzantine” (overly complex relationships of very wealthy people) out of my Byzantine history class, but in the early 11th century there’s no getting around the way events parallel _The Game of Thrones_. Take the reign of Basil II, a.k.a. “the Bulgar Slayer,” for instance. It wasn’t just the way the emperor fought civil wars and out-maneuvered opponents for 50 years that makes the comparison accurate. It was also all the blood and guts that went with his governance.
And the war he fought with the Bulgar leader Samuel is a case in point. In July of 1014, Basil II and his leading general Nikephoras Xiphias decisively crushed Samuel’s forces. To make a point, Basil blinded 15,000 Bulgarian prisoners of war, but left one eye of every 100 men whole, so that they could make their way back home. When Samuel saw his mutilated forces, he had a stroke and died two days later. The image here from the 12th-century Manasses Chronicle shows the Byzantines victorious and Samuel dying from shock.
Funny thing was, blinding was humane, on a twisted level — at least the Christian Emperor Basil II could claim it to be. The soldiers lived after all. But in an utterly Byzantine style, it was also deliberately horrifying and no doubt produced the intended effects — terrifying his enemies and ruining their military.
Source(s): Warren Treadgold, _ A Concise History of Byzantium_, 1st edition, Palgrave 2001, p. 149.
