An 11-year-old emperor was blinded in 1261 to secure a rival's throne
The restoration of the Byzantine Empire was marked by a brutal betrayal when Michael VIII Palaiologos blinded his 11-year-old co-emperor, John IV Laskaris, to eliminate him as a political rival.
Young John IV Laskaris was the legitimate heir to the throne in Nicaea, but his general, Michael VIII, used the successful recapture of Constantinople in 1261 to seize absolute power. On his eleventh birthday, the boy was taken and blinded, a common Byzantine method of making a person ineligible for the throne.
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