How one Byzantine marriage deal created the Varangian Guard and Christian Rus'
Facing rebel generals in the late 980s, Emperor Basil II needed soldiers fast. Prince Vladimir of Kiev offered 6,000 warriors and the return of a captured Crimean city, but only in exchange for marrying Basil's sister Anna. The bargain helped change the religious map of eastern Europe.
Byzantine courtiers regarded northern peoples as barbarians, and Anna protested that no imperial princess had ever married such a ruler. Basil agreed only once Vladimir promised to be baptised and bring his people into Christianity. The couple married in Crimea in 989, the Rus' troops helped crush the rebellion, and they were organised into the Varangian Guard. The union began the process that drew the lands of Rus' into the Byzantine religious world, and centuries later let Moscow style itself the Third Rome.
The rebellions shaped Basil's rule. Born in 958 and crowned co-emperor as a small child, he spent years sidelined while generals and his powerful great-uncle Basil Lekapenos governed. Once in charge he fought the generals Bardas Skleros and Bardas Phokas until 989. The historian Michael Psellos reports that the defeated Skleros advised him to keep governors humble, starve ambitious generals of resources and share his plans with very few, and Basil took the counsel to heart.
Psellos also left a vivid portrait: short, stocky and commanding on horseback, with light-blue eyes and bushy side whiskers he rolled between his fingers when thinking or angry. He spoke awkwardly, laughed with his whole body, scorned court pomp and wore a plain dark-purple robe with few jewels. He reputedly looked down on literary culture.
His record was formidable. He curbed the great landowning families, filled the treasury, secured the eastern frontier and, after a long struggle, subjugated the First Bulgarian Empire, which earned him the epithet Bulgar Slayer. By his death on 15 December 1025, the empire had reached its largest extent in four centuries, and no Roman emperor had ever reigned longer: 49 years and 11 months.
Source: Basil II
