ABSTRACT
Anna conspicuously fails to discuss the ancestry of the imperial family. The conspicuous reticence the Alexiad displays about the Komnenoi both before 1081 and after 1118 strikes a chord with what Anna tells us about the family during her father’s reign. In the typika of the twelfth century, supposedly cornerstones of Comnenian propaganda, there are a series of notable absentees from the lists of members of the imperial families for whom prayers should be said: no Adrian, no Nikephoros, no Melissenos, no Michael Taronites. The Comnenian revolution was brought about not by the dominance of the family but by the opposite: its removal. The author’s insistence on the centrality of Alexios naturally creates pressure for the traditional interpretation of the family as the central point of Alexios’ Byzantium. Alexios was able to dominate Byzantium because he was able to rely on a small group of individuals to whom he was related by blood and by marriage.
