7 – Robert of Courtenay (1221 – 1228)
Robert was finally crowned emperor on March 25, 1221, at least two years after he should have taken the throne. He was surrounded by enemies and appealed to Pope Honorius III and King Philip II of France but was unable to prevent Theodore Doukas and the Empire of Nicaea from taking Latin land. After waiting so long for an emperor, the people of Constantinople were stuck with a man who was young and self-indulgent.
During his reign, the Latin Empire lost the last of its territories in Asia Minor along with the Kingdom of Thessalonica. The latter blow came in 1224 when Doukas captured Thessalonica and crowned himself Emperor of the Romans. Meanwhile, in Nicaea, John III Vatatzes became the new ruler in 1222, and two years later, he destroyed the armies of the Latin Empire in Asia Minor.
While the Pope tried to help Robert by organizing a crusade to defend Thessalonica, the response was extremely poor. As a result, by 1224, the Latin ‘Empire’ was comprised of little more than Constantinople, the Morea, and a few Aegean Islands. One suspects that Constantinople could have been taken at that point, but the rivals of the Latin Empire were too busy fighting amongst themselves.
When John III captured Edirne in 1225, his garrison was driven out by Doukas who in turn was removed from the city by King Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria. As for Robert, he reneged on an agreement to marry the daughter of the late Emperor of Nicaea, Theodore I Lascaris, and married a woman who was supposed to marry a man from Burgundy. The Burgundian led a conspiracy to drive Robert from Constantinople, and he fled to Rome to get help from the Pope. He was convinced to return to his empire’s capital but died in Morea in 1228 on the return trip.