Theodora Pelopenies

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Empress Theodora
theodorapelopenies.gif
Birth
1 February, 1956
Marriage
December 25, 1973
Death
17 March, 2001
Titles
Empress of Pantocratoria, Queen of France and Navarre

Her Imperial Majesty Empress Theodora Pelopenies was the wife and Empress Consort of Emperor Andreus I of Pantocratoria. She was born in Greece, the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Thisbault, who had been exiled from Pantocratoria by the then Emperor Isaac V at the request of his father-in-law, the Duke of Montmanuel (with whom the Dukes of Thisbault had a long running family feud). Given her diminished familial circumstances, the young Mademoiselle de Thisbault must have seemed an unlikely candidate to marry the heir of the man who had banished her parents.

The feud between the Montmanuels and the Thisbaults didn't stop after their exile. Over many years, the Empress Isabelle used her influence over her husband to strip the holdings of the exiled Duke and have the awarded to her father, the Duke of Montmanuel. By the time the Dauphin, Andreus, came of age and was crowned Despot of New Constantinople in 1971, he had come to see the Emperor as a weakling who bowed before too many masters. The most obvious of these was Parliament, but the Duke of Montmanuel was another. As a repudiation of his maternal grandfather (and of the weakness demonstrated by his own father), Despot Andreus invited the Duke and Duchess of Thisbault to return to Pantocratoria as guests at the Despotic Court of New Constantinople. Naturally Theodora, then fifteen, accompanied her parents to New Constantinople, where she met her future husband.

Theodora was a beautiful young courtier, charming and polite, with a shy and retiring nature which the headstrong Despot found bewitching. She could speak French and Greek fluently, which was (and still is) rare amongst the Pantocratorian nobility despite the prevalence of both languages amonst the lower classes. She could sing and dance and hold the Despot's interest in a conversation on virtually any topic. On top of everything else, she was devout, her simplistic but sincere piety leaving her ill-equipped, despite her considerable intelligence, for the sorts of complicated theological disputes which led to the downfall of so many of the Despot's early romances. Andreus proposed to her in early 1973, and she agreed to marry him, but the engagement was kept a secret because Emperor Isaac V, so heavily influenced by his wife and through her the Duke of Montmanuel, was unlikely to give his permission for such a marriage, and for a member of the Imperial Family to marry without the permission of the Emperor is treason. Fortunately for the young couple, they didn't have long to wait for the imperial permission - on the third of December that year, Isaac V died, and the Despot became Emperor Andreus I. The two were married in a wedding and double coronation ceremony in New Rome on Christmas Day, 1973.

Theodora hated the Imperial Court of Christ Pantocrator - a shy and private young woman, she hated being constantly in the public gaze. The allies of the Empress Dowager formed a court cabal whose express purpose was to make the young Empress' life a living hell. She was ill daily for a period of nearly three years as a side-effect of the cabal's agents secretly lacing her food with a contraceptive agent (any sort of contraception being illegal at that time in Pantocratoria) as part of the cabal's plans to stop the Empress from conceiving an heir. Less militant cabal members spread embarassing rumours about her, which caused Theodora great discomfort when they came to light. The cabal manufactured lovers and affairs and tried to convince the Emperor that he was being cuckholded. When the Emperor refused to believe them, they set about falsifying evidence that the Duchess of Thisbault had had an affair in Greece nine months prior to Theodora's birth, to smear her good name indirectly. As this particular plot neared completion in 1977, the cabal's activities were discovered by the Emperor and the cabal was smashed. Several plotters were charged with attempted murder for poisoning Theodora (although the oestrogen/progestogen concoction was designed to stop her from conceiving, not to kill her), were found guilty and given heavy prison sentences. Several more still were banished from the court altogether, and the Empress Dowager almost joined them.

Free from the efforts of the cabal, Theodora conceived and gave birth to an heir, Prince Andreus, in 1978. He would be the first of five children - Prince Constantine was born in 1984, Princess Anna in 1985, Princess Theodora in 1988, and Princess Zoë in 1991. The Emperor doted on Theodora, and as the memories of the cabal faded, she gradually became more comfortable in the Imperial Court of Christ Pantocrator, although she still hated living in the public gaze. The rituals and traditions of the court were often an incredible imposition to the very private woman - for instance, Theodora had to give birth in public so that the court could be sure that babies weren't swapped for imposters not of the imperial blood. By long-standing tradition she was never to be left alone for even a second, and so Theodora was trailed everywhere she went by ladies in waiting.

Sometimes Theodora found the Emperor's more unusual demonstrations of affection distasteful in the extreme - most notoriously the banishment of his sister Princess Irene from the court when she insulted Theodora in the midst of an argument with the Emperor about a suitor. The Emperor sought to marry Princess Irene to her cousin, the son of the Duke of Montmanuel, to make peace with the Empress Dowager's side of the family. Theodora hated being the cause of Princess Irene's five year exile, and constantly pleaded for the Emperor to make peace with his sister. It proved more difficult to convince the Emperor to retract such demonstrations than to inadvertently inspire him to them.

Theodora was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2000, a condition to which it was determined she was genetically pre-disposed, and which had potentially been made worse by her prolonged exposure to a synthetic form of oestrogen at the hands of the Montmanuel cabal. Although great efforts were made to save the Empress' life, she died on the seventeenth of March, 2001, at the age of 45.