Alexios I Komnenos

Alexios Komnenos, son of John Komnenos and nephew of an earlier emperor, distinguished himself under three rulers before leading a rebellion in 1081 and taking the throne from Nikephoros III Botaneiates. He inherited a collapsing state and spent his reign fighting on all fronts: first the Normans under Robert Guiscard, whom he pushed back by 1085 with help from the Holy Roman Emperor, then the Pechenegs, whom he crushed decisively at Levounion in 1091. By the mid-1090s, with Asia Minor lost to the Seljuk Turks, he sent envoys to Pope Urban II asking for western soldiers; at Clermont in 1095, Urban called the First Crusade instead. When Alexios died in 1118, much of Anatolia was back in Byzantine hands, his son John II took the throne, and his daughter Anna set down the whole campaign in the Alexiad.