Eudokia Palaiologina

Who was Eudokia Palaiologina?

Eudokia Palaiologina or was the third daughter of Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos and his wife, Theodora Doukaina Vatatzaina, a grandniece of Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes of Nicaea.

In 1282 Eudokia married in Constantinople John II Megaskomnenos, Emperor of Trebizond with whom she had two sons, Alexios and Michael. In 1298, after her husband's death and ascension of her son Alexios II, she took the younger son with her and returned to her brother's court at Constantinople.

Andronikos II Palaiologos received his sister, hoping to use her in making a diplomatic settlement with Stefan Uroš II Milutin, King of Serbia: the hand of Eudokia in return for a negotiated peace. The king was agreeable to this proposal, for one of his three wives had recently died. "But nothing that Andronikos could do would influence his sister to entertain the prospect of life with a lecherous barbarian in the wilds of Serbia," writes Donald M. Nicol. King Stefan was forced to settle for Andronikos' daughter Simonis by his second wife, Eirene of Montferrat.

Meanwhile, Alexios II decided for himself to marry Djiadjak Jaqeli, an Iberian princess. His uncle Andronikos II, who had been appointed his guardian by his father, wanted this marriage annulled; he had planned for Alexios to marry the daughter of the high court official Nikephoros Choumnos. Eudokia used the pretext of inducing her son to dissolve the marriage to obtain her brother's permission to return to Trebizond in 1301, where she instead advised her son to keep his Iberian wife. Eudokia died in the following year, and William Miller speculates she was buried in the church of Saint Gregory.