Constantine Diogenes (pretender)

Pseudo-Constantine Diogenes or Pseudo-Leo Diogenes (died after 1095) was an unsuccessful pretender to the Byzantine throne against Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Of lowly origin, he pretended to be a son of Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes. Exiled to Cherson, he escaped and took refuge among the Cumans. In 1095, he invaded the Byzantine Empire at the head of a Cuman host and advanced as far as Adrianople before being captured by a ruse and blinded by loyalist forces.

According to Anna Komnene's Alexiad, he was a man of obscure origin who pretended to be Leo Diogenes, son of emperor Romanos IV Diogenes (r. 1068–1071), and who had died near Antioch in 1073. Since the son of Romanos IV who died at Antioch was not Leo but rather Constantine Diogenes, the emperor's eldest son, scholars have traditionally emended Anna's reference accordingly. On the other hand, given the support provided by the Cumans to this pretender, the French scholar Jean-Claude Cheynet suggests that he did indeed claim to be Leo, who unlike his brother had been active on the Empire's Danube frontier and was known to the Cumans, dying in battle against them in 1087.

According to Anna's account, Pseudo-Diogenes came to Constantinople from the East, "poor and wearing a goat's skin". Nevertheless, he soon gathered a group of supporters among the populace, and openly claimed his intention to claim the throne from Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118). Alexios at first disregarded the pretender's agitations, but then his sister Theodora, the widow of the real Constantine Diogenes, who had retired to a monastery, protested the abuse of her husband's name, and the emperor had the pretender arrested and exiled to Cherson.

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