Alexios III Angelos

   Emperor (q.v.) from 1195-1203 who came to the throne by blinding and imprisoning his brother Isaac Angelos II (q.v.). Weak and ineffectual at a time when the empire was disintegrating, Alexios was threatened by Serbia, Bulgaria (qq.v.), and by the German emperor Henry VI (q.v.), whose brother Philip of Swabia (q.v.) was married to Irene, daughter of the deposed and blinded Isaac II. In 1197 Alexios was reduced to stripping imperial tombs of their ornaments to pay the so-called German tax (Alamanikon [q.v.]), a tribute demanded by Henry VI. In 1203, when the Fourth Crusade (q.v.) arrived at Constantinople to restore Isaac II, Alexios III fled the city. His wandering ended only in 1211 when he was captured by Theodore I Laskaris (q.v.) and forced to retire to a monastery.