I recently returned from a wonderful trip to the beautiful country of Turkey. I knew Turkey was filled with ancient history—the ruins of Ephesus, Troy, etc.—but I have always been most fascinated with the Byzantines, or the Greeks or Romans, as they called themselves. I am also struck by the similarities between Camelot and Constantinople, and particularly between King Arthur and Constantine XI, the last Byzantine Emperor. Just as Camelot was the brief shining moment before Britain was conquered by the Saxons, so Constantinople was the last remnant of the great Roman Empire which had once ruled most of the known world, including Britain. The city’s fall to the Turks in 1453 marked the end of the Roman Empire, which had stretched on for over 2,000 years.
Constantine XI, the last emperor, had a tragic ending that inspired great myths similar to those of King Arthur, so while the two were not necessarily related, although Constantine XI was named for Constantine the Great, and Arthur is often believed to be a relative or descendant of Constantine the Great, Constantine XI may be deemed a mythical or literary descendant of King Arthur in how they are both depicted as leaders who may come again.
Constantine’s tragedy lies not only in the Fall of Constantinople, but that he was the last emperor, without even an heir. He had two wives but no children, his second wife dying in childbirth. Similarly, Arthur had no children who survived him. His end is more tragic in that his son, Mordred, and he slew each other, but nevertheless, both leaders’ endings spelled the end of an era.
The people of Constantinople, the city being all that was left of an empire, held out under siege by Mehmet II for fifty-three days before the city finally fell. In the city’s last hours, Constantine would have prayed inside Hagia Sophia before going to fight with his people as the city walls were beaten down.
What happened to the emperor once the city fell has become the stuff of legend. The emperor’s body was never found, or if it were, it was not recorded. One source states that Constantine’s last words were, “The city is fallen and I am still alive,” and then he tore off his imperial ornaments so he could not be distinguished from the other soldiers and made a final charge at the enemy. According to Roger Crowley in his wonderful book about the Fall of Constantinople, 1453, Constantine was very aware that he would go down in history as the emperor who let the city fall, so he may not have wanted to be identified because of the shame he felt, and he also would not have wanted to be taken alive and forced into shameful positions of submission before the conqueror, Mehmet II.
One story claims that Constantine was identified by his purple boots, and that his body was decapitated and his head sent around Asia Minor as proof of Mehmet II’s victory, but more likely, his body was never identified and he died in a mass grave with the rest of his soldiers.
The inability to locate the emperor’s body led to myths that he had not died. Just as King Arthur is taken to Avalon before he can die so he can be healed of his wound and allowed to return again, so Constantine is preserved from death so he can return. In one such legend, an angel rescues the emperor as the Ottomans enter the city. The angel turns Constantine into marble and places him under the earth in a cave near the Golden Gate where he waits to be brought back to life to re-conquer the city for the Christians.
Just as the British have hoped for Arthur to return in their hour of greatest need—during World War II, the myth was especially prevalent—the Greeks have held onto the dream of Constantine’s return.
During the Balkan Wars and Greco-Turkish War in the early twentieth century, the name of the then Greek King, Constantine, was used to see him as part of a prophetic myth that Constantine had returned. Although Constantine XII failed to return Constantinople to Christian hands, similar British efforts have been made to recreate King Arthur through another monarch of the same name, such as King John’s nephew in the thirteenth century being named Prince Arthur, to the brother of Henry VIII who was also Prince Arthur, and even the speculation that current Prince William will use his middle name Arthur when he someday ascends the throne of Britain.
Constantine’s return seems very unlikely to me, especially when Istanbul is a thriving busy city of nearly 20 million today, and a largely Westernized if Turkish city. Had Constantine not been the last emperor, doubtless one soon after him would have been, but his myth speaks to the affection his people had for him, that they did not wish him ill or blame him for the loss of Constantinople, but rather they see him as a tragic hero, just as Arthur lives affectionately in the British people’s bosoms.
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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com
Apparently we skipped all of this in school, becasue your whole post is new to me. How very interesting! The parralells between Constantine and Arthur are nearly poetic!
Thanks, Nicole. I am fascinated by the Fall of Constantinople. I’ll save the rest for my guest posts to your blog. 🙂
Great article Tyler, very interesting.
The parallels are fascinating, and I wonder if Charles Williams knew about them when he made Constantinople the counterpart to Logres in his Arthurian cycle. I think the similarities speak to certain truths in the human soul that shine a light onto why the Arthurian legend is so profound and timeless.
Thanks for the comment, Christie. I never have gotten around to reading Charles Wiliams. Now you’ve given me another reason to.
I look forward to seeing your post on it. 🙂
[…] not to have died but been saved so he can someday return. I wrote a blog about Constantine XI that you can read about here. If you’re interested in King Arthur, you might also be interested in my guest blog post about […]
Can you comment on the icon of Constantine pictured in your blog?
I’m afraid I don’t know the story behind the image. It’s just one of many available online and I didn’t see an attribution to it anywhere. It appears on numerous sites, including several Greek ones and I’m afraid I don’t read Greek. You could explore those sites further to try to find information about it. I believe it’s a cleaned up version of an older image but that is the best I can tell you. Good luck finding out more.
As you might guess from my comments about possible heirs of King Arthur, and the fact that Constantine XI died nine hundred l years after Arthur, it is possible to find potential heirs or claimants to the Eastern Empire.
1) Anyone who recreates a Roman Empire anywhere thus becomes the rightful emperor.
2) There have been a couple of dozen major dynasties of various Roman Empires so anyone who is the genealogical heir of any one or more of those dynasties can claim to be the rightful heir of of the Roman Empire. Since a hypothetical Northwestern Roman Empire might have existed in Britain and Brittany in Arthur’s time, the rightful heir of Arthur could claim to be the rightful heir of Constantine XI.
3) There are descendants of Constantine’s brother Thomas Palaiolgos, who was recognized in western Europe as the rightful Emperor until his death in 1465. Thomas’s son Andreas Palaiolgos was also recognized as emperor in exile until he died in 1502.
Thomas had a daughter who married Ivan III of Moscovy and whose descendants died out about 1601.
Another daughter married Lazar Brankovic, despot of Serbia,and had three daughters. One daughter married John Castriota, son of the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg, and has descendents among Neopolitan nobility. The eldest daughter married Leonardo III Tocco, Count palatine of Chephalonia and despot of Epirus, who moved to the Kingdom of Naples after the Turks conquered his lands. The Tocco family flourished for centuries in southern Italy, becoming Dukes of Apice, before dying out in the male line.
Miller, in Latins in the Levant says that Carlo Capece Galeotto, Duke of Regine inherited to the Tocco properties. He died in 1908. So the genealogical heir of the Palaiologos Dynasty might be found among his descendants, if any, or among the descendants of the most senior daughter of the most senior Tocco male whose descendants can be traced.
Thanks for the comment, Mark. It’s all fascinating to think about. I’m descended from a few Byzantine Empires myself, although much farther back than Constantine XI and through female lines so guess my claim isn’t any good.
If one manages to gain political control of any place, and names it the Roman, Byzantine, or holy Roman Empire, and it becomes accepted, then one will become the rightful Roman Emperor no matter how poor one’s hereditary claims may be compared to those who had better hereditary claims but did not do as much for the good of the Empire.
Good point. If I ever need to switch careers, maybe Holy Roman Emperor is a possibility.
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