Born in Constantinople, Theodora Doukaina was the second daughter of Byzantine emperor Constantine X Dukas by his second wife, Eudokia Makrembolitissa.
[1] Peter Damian, the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, wrote a chapter entitled "De Veneti ducis uxore quae prius nimium delicata, demum toto corpore computruit" ("Of the Venetian Doge's wife, whose body, after her excessive delicacy, entirely rotted away.")
about an unnamed Byzantine princess whose manners[3] he considered scandalously lavish and which brought to her a horrible death as a divine punishment.
[1] This woman has been mistakenly (since Damian died 1072) identified with Domenico Selvo's wife by later Venetian chroniclers (incl.
Andrea Dandolo and Marino Sanuto the Younger) followed afterwards by various modern authors;[4] however since the work in which Damianus' chapter is contained is dated ca 1059 it refers probably to Maria Argyropoulaina who had died a half century before.