During her 5 year sole reign, her public figure was polarizing, due to the setbacks faced by the Empire and her iconophilic stances, often attributed to her gender and the influence of her retinue.

[5][6] Although she was an orphan,[11] her uncle or cousin Constantine Sarantapechos was a patrician and possibly also a strategos ("military general") of the theme of Hellas at the end of the eighth century.

[23] When Patriarch Nicetas I of Constantinople died in 780, Leo IV appointed Paul of Cyprus, who had iconophile sympathies, as his successor, although he did force him to swear oaths that he would uphold the official iconoclasm.

[26] Irene had Bardas (the former strategos of the Armeniac Theme), Gregory (the logothete of the dromos), and Konstantinos (the count of the excubitors) scourged, tonsured, and banished.

[26] She had Nikephoros and his four brothers ordained as priests, a status which disqualified them from ruling, and forced them to serve communion at the Hagia Sophia on Christmas Day 780.

The fact that this revolt appears to reflect personal ambition or political conflicts centring in the capital, rather than local separatism, demonstrates the loyalty of the island to the Empire.

[31] In 783, Staurakios, eunuch and logothete of the dromos under Irene, led a successful campaign against the Sclaveni of Thessaly, Greece and the Peloponnese, returning with booty and captives.

Nonetheless, he engaged in a campaign of assiduously strengthening the frontier with new districts and strongholds (al-Awasim), specifically from Cilicia through Germanikeia to Melitene.

In autumn, Irene ordered them to respond to an alleged Arab attack in Asia Minor, then reconstituted the tagmata with soldiers from the thematic corps.

Tarasios dealt with the episcopal opposition by allowing notoriously iconoclast bishops to retain their positions so long as they made a public admission of error, and also by disguising two eastern monks as envoys of the patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem, to justify the council's claim to ecumenical status.

[34][35][36] The council determined that the honorary veneration (timētikē proskynēsis) of the holy icons was permitted, and that the true adoration (alēthinē latreia) was reserved for God alone.

[37][38] The Libri Carolini states that the ruling of the council against iconoclasm led to "civil war" within the Empire, and other ninth-century iconodule sources condemn clergymen and laymen who remained iconoclasts.

In spite of these reverses, Irene's military efforts met with some success: in 782 her favoured courtier Staurakios subdued the Slavs of the Balkans and laid the foundations of Byzantine expansion and re-Hellenization in the area.

In early 790, Staurakios discovered the plot and informed Irene, who arrested the plotters, confined Constantine to his quarters and demanded that the army across the Empire take an oath of fidelity in her name alone.

In a hollow semblance of friendship, Constantine restored Irene's titles and confirmed her position as ruler in 792, even recalling Staurakios from exile.

[40][41] Constantine proved incapable of sound governance, and suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Kardam of Bulgaria in the Battle of Marcellae of 792.

In 796, Constantine partially compensated for his previous losses against the Bulgars by ceasing to pay the tribute extracted after Marcellae and avoiding military defeat thereafter.

The moechian controversy (from moicheia, "adultery") was begun in 795, when Constantine forced his wife Maria to enter a convent because she allegedly attempted to poison him.

[52] He also campaigned against the Saxon tribes in northern Germany for more than thirty years, annexing their territory and compelling them to convert to Christianity, and defeated the Avars in Central Europe.

[55] As early as 781, Irene began to seek a closer relationship with the Carolingian dynasty and the Papacy in Rome, and Charlemagne's conquest of Pavia had allowed for renewed relations with the Byzantines.

[52] Irene went as far as to send an official to instruct the Frankish princess in the "language and literature of the Greeks and [...] in Roman imperial ways", according to Theophanes.

[52] In 787, Pope Adrian I informed Charlemagne of reports of Byzantine invasion to restore Adalgis, the deposed Lombard king, with the support of Benevento, and drive the Franks from Italy.

However, as reported by Theophanes the Confessor, the scheme was frustrated by Aetios, eunuch and favorite of Irene, who was attempting to usurp her on behalf of his brother Leo.

Irene's rule was popular due to her financial concessions, but weakened by factionalism, notably between two of her eunuch advisers, Staurakios and Aetios.

Irene was initially exiled to the nearby island of Prinkipo, but was suspected of plotting with Aetios, and was soon banished to Lesbos,[64] where she supported herself by spinning wool.

The legacy of the first and greatest Isaurian emperors, Leo III and Constantine V, was the rescue of the Empire from destruction at the hands of the Arabs and the Bulgars, while Irene's reign saw increasing losses and threat of war.

The tagmata, old guard units stationed in Constantinople who surrounded the emperor on the battlefield, were supported by Constantine V but demoted and reconstituted by Irene for frustrating the meeting of the iconodule council in 786.

It was Irene's financial laxity and benevolent tax policy that led to the palace coup by the minister of the treasury, Nikephoros, in 802, which was witnessed by Charlemagne's ambassadors.

[71] Although Irene was an iconodule, Theophanes the Confessor, one of the few major primary sources of the eighth century, depicts her very unsympathetically due to his dislike of the involvement of women in imperial matters.

[73] He also commended her for ending the Isaurian policy of demanding payments from soldiers' widows as compensation for the loss of military personnel, in order for their households to continue receiving tax exemptions and a pension.