Constantine X Doukas

Constantine Doukas came to the Byzantine throne around 1059, founding the Doukid dynasty in what would prove a costly decade. Born circa 1006, he inherited an empire still sprawling but increasingly besieged. Under his watch the Normans stripped away the remaining Byzantine territories in Italy, the Hungarians seized Belgrade in the Balkans, and the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan handed him defeats in the east. By the time he died on 23 May 1067, the map had shrunk and the momentum had shifted — a reign defined less by what he built than by what slipped through his hands.