work:

"The life of the Emperor Alexius has been delineated by a favorite
daughter, who was inspired by a tender regard for his person and a
laudable zeal to perpetuate his virtues. Conscious of the just suspicion
of her readers, Anna Comnena repeatedly protests that, besides her
personal knowledge, she has searched the discourse and writings of the
most respectable veterans; that after an interval of thirty years,
forgotten by, and forgetful of, the world, her mournful solitude was
inaccessible to hope and fear; and that truth, the naked perfect truth,
was more dear and sacred than the memory of her parent. Yet instead of
the simplicity of style and narrative which wins our belief, an
elaborate affectation of rhetoric and science betrays, in every page,
the vanity of the female author.

"The genuine character of Alexius is lost in a vague constellation of
virtues; and the perpetual strain of panegyric and apology awakens our
jealousy to question the veracity of the historian and the merit of the
hero. We cannot, however, refuse her judicious and important remark that
the disorders of the times were the misfortune and the glory of Alexius;
and that every calamity which can afflict a declining empire was
accumulated in his reign by the justice of heaven and the vices of his
predecessors.... The reader may possibly smile at the lavish praise
which his daughter so often bestows on a flying hero; the weakness or
prudence of his situation might be mistaken for a want of personal
courage; and his political arts are branded by the Latins with the names
of deceit and dissimulation...."

The story of the remaining princesses of the Comneni family is merely
the mirroring of feminine beauty and frailty; and its sad chronicle goes
to show that the Empire was deservedly hastening to its doom because the
stamina sufficient to keep it alive was lacking.

John Comnenus was succeeded by his younger son Manuel, a renowned
warrior about whose name have gathered many of the romances of chivalry.
He was twice married, first to the virtuous Bertha of Germany, and,
after her decease, to the beautiful Maria, a French or Latin princess of
Antioch. Bertha had a daughter, who was destined for Bela, a Hungarian
prince educated at Constantinople under the name of Alexius and looked
upon as the heir-apparent. But his rights were set aside when Maria had
a son named Alexius, who was in the direct line of male succession.
Notwithstanding the virtu