Irene of Montferrat


Yolande 'of Montferrat, also known as Violante, then Empress Eirene or Irene,' was the second wife of Andronikos II Palaiologos and thus Empress of the Byzantine Empire. She was the heiress of the Kingdom of Thessalonika and the last surviving member of the ottonian branch of the Aleramici, heirs to the Margraviate of Montferrat.

Life

Born in Casale, she was the daughter of William VII, Marquess of Montferrat and his second wife infanta Beatrice of Castile. Her maternal grandparents were King Alfonso X of Castile and his wife Violante of Aragon. Yolande was named after her grandmother.

Empress

In 1284, Andronikos II, a widower by his first marriage with Anna of Hungary, married Yolanda. She and Andronikos II were distant cousins, both being descendants of Andronikos Doukas Angelos. With her, Eirene brought the Montferrat rights to the kingdom of Thessalonica, a dominion that, despite having been conquered half-a-century before Eirene's birth by the Byzantine state of Epirus, was still claimed by its short-lived Montferrat royal dynasty.
It was later proven that the Italian Montferrat had no living male heirs of the Aleramici dynasty, and Eirene's sons were entitled to inherit it upon the 1305 death of Eirene's brother John I, Marquess of Montferrat.

Later life

Eirene left Constantinople in 1303 and settled in Thessalonica. She set up her own court in the city and controlled her own finances and foreign policy until her death fourteen years later. Nicephorus Gregoras portrayed her as an ambitious and arrogant leader in his historical writings.
A number of documents, issued by her as Augusta or Despoina, witness that she governed her appanage in Thessalonica as Empress in her own right.
According to Nicephorus Gregoras, she died of fever in 1317 in the city of Drama, located in present-day northeastern Greece, where she had a residence. She was initially buried there, possibly in the surviving Church of the Taxiarches, before her daughter Simonis Palaiologina transported her remains to Constantinople.

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