27 January 945. On this day Constantine VII succeeded in removing his brothers-in-law from power, so he could reign as sole Byzantine emperor.
Constantine was said to be of a shy disposition, and had to be encouraged by his wife, Helena Lekapene: his brothers-in-law were her own brothers, but that’s politics for you.
The luckless gentlemen in question – Christopher, Stephanos and Constantine, sons of the late Emperor Romanos I – were arrested at the breakfast table by Constantine VII’s bodyguard, Ioannes Kourkouas. They were packed off into monastic exile with their father (whom they had previously deposed) and died there.
The new emperor had survived the reign of Romanos by carefully staying in the background, offering no threat to anyone: a bit like the Emperor Clau-Clau-Claudius, who quietly studied history while others were turned into it. Constantine’s useful bodyguard, Kourkouas, would turn out to be one of the Roman Empire’s greatest generals.