As empress-mother, she exerted more influence and power than the empress-consort, Irene Doukaina, a woman whom she hated because of past intrigues with the Doukai.
At the time of the revolt, John held the post of doux, but after his brother's victory, he was raised to the rank of kouropalates and appointed as domestikos ton scholon of the West.
[19] This event evidently whetted Anna's ambition; her seals from this time show her using the feminine form of her husband's titles, kouropalatissa and domestikissa.
[10][21][22] According to the historian Konstantinos Varzos, this version of events is suspect, and may well be a post-fact attempt at legitimizing the eventual usurpation of the throne by Anna's son, Alexios Komnenos.
[2][21] Widowed on 12 July 1067, she guided her family's fortunes over the next decades with the sole purpose of paving her children's path to the throne.
Anna also allied herself closely with Eudokia Makrembolitissa's second husband, Romanos IV Diogenes (r. 1068–1071), supporting him in his struggle against the members of the intrigues of the Doukas family.
[10][21] The Doukai returned to power after the defeat and capture of Romanos IV by the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert on 19 August 1071.
[28] In September 1077, despite her initial firm opposition, she relented to the marriage of her second surviving son, Alexios, to Irene Doukaina, the granddaughter of the Caesar John Doukas.
As stated in the Alexiad, when Isaac and Alexios left Constantinople in mid-February 1081 to raise an army against Botaneiates, Anna quickly and surreptitiously mobilized the remainder of the family and took refuge in the Hagia Sophia.
Under the falsehood of making a vesperal visit to worship at the church, she deliberately excluded the grandson of Botaneiates and his loyal tutor, met with Alexios and Isaac and fled for the forum of Constantine.
Then to gain entrance to both the outer and inner sanctuary of the church the women pretended to the gatekeepers that they were pilgrims from Cappadocia who had spent all their funds and wanted to worship before starting their return trip.
As if she were weighed down with old age and worn out by grief, she walked slowly and when she approached the actual entrance to the sanctuary made two genuflections; on the third she sank to the floor and taking firm hold of the sacred doors, cried in a loud voice: "Unless my hands are cut off, I will not leave this holy place except on one condition: that I receive the emperor's cross as guarantee of safety".
At the emperor's further insistence, and for their own protection they took refuge at the convent of Petrion, where eventually they were joined by Irene Doukaina's mother, Maria of Bulgaria.
[37] Anna was highly successful in three important aspects of the revolt: she bought time for her sons to steal imperial horses from the stables and escape the city, she distracted the emperor and gave her sons time to gather and arm their troops and she gave a false sense of security to Botaneiates that there was no real treasonous coup against him.
In her own account of this event, Anna Komnene asserts that the Komnenoi refused to drive Maria from the palace because of her many kindnesses and because "she was in a foreign country, without relatives, without friends, with nobody whatever of her own folk'.
[40] From the Komnenian seizure of power in 1081 until either her banishment or death, she was to play a very public role in administering the military and civil services of the empire.
She was however constantly at odds with her daughter-in-law Irene and had, perhaps egregiously, assumed total responsibility for the upbringing and education of her granddaughter Anna Komnene.
[citation needed] Given the culture and traditions of medieval Greek Byzantium, it is unusual that Anna wielded such power over her son as well as the empire.
Though he needed a reliable advisor, and essentially owed his mother for his accession to the throne because of her intrigues[41] to stay in a powerful position for fifteen years after his succession until he was in his mid-forties defies credulity.
Anna Komnene is strangely silent about her disappearance from court and this may suggest that her grandmother may have been involved in something questionable,[43] perhaps a heretical sect such as the Bogomils.