rdfs:comment
| - Constantine was educated first at the Imperial Galatan College and later at the Pandidakterion, where he studied for a degree in biology. He later studied for a PhD in exobiology at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he was a keen rower and was even part of the men's coxless four team for the Roman Empire at the 1972 Summer Olympics. In 1974 Constantine married a commoner, Zoe Demetriadina, in Constantinople, a marriage that caused much controversy at the time. The couple have two children: Theodora, Despoina of Epirus (born 1976), and Prophiphoros, Praetorian Prefect of Syria (born 1979).
|
abstract
| - Constantine was educated first at the Imperial Galatan College and later at the Pandidakterion, where he studied for a degree in biology. He later studied for a PhD in exobiology at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he was a keen rower and was even part of the men's coxless four team for the Roman Empire at the 1972 Summer Olympics. In 1974 Constantine married a commoner, Zoe Demetriadina, in Constantinople, a marriage that caused much controversy at the time. The couple have two children: Theodora, Despoina of Epirus (born 1976), and Prophiphoros, Praetorian Prefect of Syria (born 1979). Upon acceding to the throne in 1980 Constantine made several important overdue reforms. He restored many legislative powers to the Senate and presided over the first truly democratic elections to it in 1985, though he himself remains the head of government. He ended the ancient custom of male-preference succession, designating his daughter as his chosen heir. In 1997 following a failed rebellion in Syria he began a great reorganization of the Empire, granting legislative independence to many of the free cities and devolving Syria and Cappadocia into semi-independent exarchates. For these, and other reasons, he remains extremely popular in the Empire to this day.
|