Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium episode 315.

Questions 15.

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Okay, so in today's episode, we're going to look at your questions about Andronicus

the Seconds, spectacularly underwhelming rain.

I began to write answers to each question that you sent, but I felt I was just reiterating

the whole podcast narrative, which will be very dull for those

binge listening, though I do appreciate it's been a few weeks for those listening live.

So rather than go through the first few questions individually, let me give one long answer to

clarify a few things about events in Andronicus's lifetime.

Hopefully this will get us to the crux of the matter, which I think listener LC sums up

succinctly by asking, why was Andronicus so useless?

Andronicus the second PalioLocos became emperor in 1282, and for the first 10 years of his reign, things seemed to be going reasonably well.

Andronicus was adept at pacifying the church, who was still in tumult from his father Michael's policies of church union, and on various fronts in Europe, the

empire's position became more secure. Though we see a big red flag in Andronicus' decisions to debase

his coinage and disband his navy, he was clearly responding to a massive budget deficit, and for a decade,

he got away with it. It was around 1291 that the emperor became aware that Turkic raiding

...