Theodore I Laskaris

Born around 1175 to a minor aristocratic family, Theodore married Anna, daughter of Emperor Alexios III, in 1200 and gained the title of despot. When the Fourth Crusade forced his father-in-law to flee Constantinople in 1203, Theodore was imprisoned by the crusaders but escaped across the Bosporus. In Bithynia he organized Greek resistance, forming an alliance with the Seljuq sultan even as rival claimant Alexios Komnenos established the breakaway Empire of Trebizond to the east. After the Bulgarians crushed the Latins at Adrianople in 1205, refugees flooded into Theodore's territory and he assumed the full imperial title. In 1208 he convened a council that elected a new Orthodox patriarch, who crowned him emperor at Nicaea. He defeated his exiled father-in-law's Seljuq-backed invasion in 1211, then fought the Latin Emperor Henry to a standstill that ended in a treaty implicitly recognizing Nicaea's existence. Theodore died in November 1221, leaving a consolidated state positioned close enough to Constantinople that his successors retook the city forty years later.