Alexios I of Trebizond

The two brothers were the only male descendants of the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos I, who had been dethroned and killed in 1185, and thus claimed to represent the legitimate government of the Empire following the conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204.

[2] While his brother David conquered a number of Byzantine provinces in northwestern Anatolia, Alexios defended his capital Trebizond from an unsuccessful siege by the Seljuk Turks around the year 1205.

Andronikos had taken refuge at the court of King George III of Georgia in the 1170s, and was a governor in the Pontus when his cousin the emperor Manuel I Komnenos (r. 1143–1180) died; upon hearing the news, he marched on Constantinople and seized the imperial throne.

One school of thought endorses the hypothesis of Fallmerayer, who believed the boys were taken from Constantinople during the chaos of their grandfather's fall from power in 1185, when Alexios was about three years old, and came to Georgia early in Tamar's reign.

As early as 1854 the Russian scholar Kunik proposed that this phrase meant that Alexios' mother was Rusudan a little-known sister of Tamar, a theory Vasiliev endorsed.

[9] Despite the research of Vasiliev, Toumanoff, Kuršanskis and others, Alexios' life is a blank between 1185, when Andronikos was deposed and murdered, and 1204 when he and David arrived at Trebizond—although this lack of information has not prevented scholars from proposing various hypotheses.

[10] However, Kuršanskis notes that there are few traces of Georgian influence in the administration and culture of the Empire of Trebizond, and points out that its elite always looked towards Constantinople for their political and religious models.

Sergey Karpov has identified a lead seal of Alexios, on one side "the image of a strategos in the peaked helmet leaded by hand by St. George" with the inscriptions Ἀλέξιος ὁ Κομνηνός [Alexios Komnenos] and Ὁ Ἅ(γιος) Γεώργιος [Saint George] on either side; on the obverse is a scene of Ἡ Ἁγία Ἀνάστασις [The Holy Resurrection] with the corresponding inscription.

Karpov interprets the significance of this image and the inscription as portraying the most important achievement of his life, St. George inviting the victorious prince to enter Trebizond and opening the gates of the city with his left hand.

Both started in Imereti and reached Trebizond; David proceeded along the coast, perhaps leading a fleet, capturing Kerasous, Cide, Amasra and Heraclea Pontica; meanwhile Alexios took possession of Limnia, Samsun and Sinope.

[21] While David was in Paphlagonia, Alexios was forced to remain in the neighborhood of Trebizond, defending the eastern part of their domain from the attacks of the Seljuk Turks.

[22] In a panegyric to his master, the Nicaean emperor Theodore Laskaris, Nicetas Choniates compared Alexios to Hylas, a member of the expedition of the Argonauts who landed on the coast of Mysia to obtain water, but was kidnapped by the Naiads and never seen again.

[26] In 1208 Theodore decided to strike against the Paphlagonian possessions of Alexios' brother David by crossing the Sangarios River and investing Heraclea Pontica.

[27] Henry led his troops across the Sea of Marmara and occupied Nicomedia, threatening Laskaris' rear, and forcing the latter to lift his siege and return to his own territory.

We know of his ultimate fate from a note in a manuscript written at Mount Athos that tells us David died as a monk of Vatopedi monastery on 13 December 1212.

This is his interpretation of a puzzling passage in the account of Ibn Bibi, where he states that Sultan Kaykawus was at Sivas when messengers arrived with the report that Alexis had crossed the border and seized territory belonging to the Sultan—when there was no point to this action.

At the Sultan's command, Ibn Bibi writes, he sent a confidante into the city to negotiate a surrender; the inhabitants told Alexios' man, "Suppose Alexius has been captured.

[35] Infuriated by their response, Sultan Kaykaus had the unfortunate Alexios tortured in sight of the city walls several times, until the defenders changed their minds.

[36] The loss of Sinope pushed the western frontier of Komnenine territories, which had been at Heraclea a few years earlier, back to the Iris and Thermodon rivers, only 250 kilometres (160 mi) from their base at Trebizond.

Vasiliev has suggested that when George IV Lasha of Georgia was campaigning near the Kura River, Alexios was amongst the "tributaries [who] arrived from Khlar and Greece with presents", in the phrasing of the Georgian chronicles.