ABSTRACT
The previous chapter considered the hierarchy of tides set up by Alexios Komnenos and its effect on the lives of imperial women. It is now time to investigate the principle that lay beneath the new use and invention of titles. Alexios created titles for his kin: kinship determ ined the relative position of each individual on the ladder from the basileus at the top to the num erous sebastoi who occupied the bottom rung. It has long been recognised that the em pire that Alexios Komnenos bequeathed to his successors was quite different from the one which he won in 1081, and his use of kin is one of the explanatory concepts. This chapter explores the significance of a kin system for women in two ways. Firstly, it analyses the period along anthropological lines of enquiry to determ ine the status of women in this new system, thereby still treating women as the Object. Anthropologists consider factors such as descent, inheritance, marriage patterns, guardianship of minors, residence patterns and kin terminology when analysing societies. These categories are use ful for studying women in Byzantium. Marriage alliance as a system has been understood to work by exchanging women, thereby reduc ing them to the level of pawns in a m an’s game. I will argue that Komnenian marriage was not an exchange of women. Secondly, the chapter changes focus to make women the Subject and shows how women acted to achieve their own goals by the manipulation of marriage alliances.
