[9][10] Theophano was renowned for her great beauty and heir apparent Romanos fell in love with her around the year 956 and married her against the wishes of his father, Emperor Constantine VII.

[11] Theophano's humble origins made her unpopular among Byzantine elites and when her father-in-law Constantine VII died, rumors were spread alleging that she had poisoned him.

Again, Theophano was rumored to have poisoned him, although she had nothing to gain and everything to lose from this action and, indeed, was still in bed only 48 hours after giving birth to Anna Porphyrogenita when the emperor died.

Passing over a bevy of would-be suitors among Constantinople's courtiers, she made an alliance with Nikephoros Phokas, a celebrated military commander who had been proclaimed emperor by his army after the death of Romanos.

On August 14, supporters of Nikephoros took control of Constantinople over the resistance of Joseph Bringas, a eunuch palace official and former counselor of Romanos.

[14] The marriage provoked some clerical opposition, aggravated by the tremendous enmity the arch-conservative Patriarch Polyeuctus felt towards the young upstart empress.

On the night of 10 and 11 December 969, his nephew John I Tzimiskes (969–976) crossed the Bosphorus in a storm, was smuggled into the palace and allowed into the imperial chambers where he woke and killed his uncle.

Patriarch Polyeuctus refused to perform the coronation unless John punished those who had assisted him in the assassination, removed the "scarlet empress" from the court, and repealed all his predecessor's decrees that ran contrary to the interests of the church.