Porphyrogenitus status in Byzantium and its role in succession and marriages

The lines "and before the younger capital old Moscow paled, as before a new empress the porphyry-clad widow" also mention a derivative of the Ancient Greek πορφυρα, πορφυρεος, "purple, crimson, dark red"

The porphyra is an imperial mantle of a characteristic crimson colour. Oddly enough, the volcanic rock porphyry also has a direct monarchical connotation.

The children of a Byzantine emperor born in the Porphyry Chamber of the Constantinople palace had the right to be called porphyrogenitus. The place of birth was, of course, a convention; the chief mark of being born in the purple was that the children had been born during the emperor's reign.

"Born and nursed in the porphyry" possessed indisputable advantages over their non-porphyrogenitus brothers and sisters. Until the ninth century, birth in the purple carried greater weight in the order of succession than primogeniture, but by the twelfth century this distinction had lost its dynastic meaning, remaining merely a conventional designation of the time at which royal children were born.

The legal vagueness of porphyrogeniture gave rise to many lawsuits and challenges to claims on the throne. For a girl, moreover, being born in the purple remained a serious argument in marriage even in the second millennium: until the tenth century, porphyrogenita princesses married only Romans or remained unmarried. The first marriage of a daughter born in the purple to a foreigner was that of Anna of Byzantium to Prince Vladimir, which played an important part in the baptism of Rus'.

Another Byzantine princess, however, given in marriage to a Russian prince, Maria (Anastasia) Monomakhina, mother of Vladimir Monomakh, was not born in the purple, perhaps which is why the information about her is so hazy.