The usurper Romanus Lecapanus' unassuming manner and lowly origins were instrumental in his rise to power. Though he himself was largely responsible for the Roman's defeat by the Bulgars in Thrace, he was the man who was to profit from the chaos the loss instilled in Constantinople and the irreperable damage it did to the standing of the regent, the Augusta Zoe. While all eyes where on the aristocratic general Leo Phocas (uncle of the future emperor of that house, Nicephorus), it was the wily Romanus, who, through sheer merit, had risen to be drungarias, or admiral, of the fleet. (Though Liudprand of Cremona recounts hearing stories attributing Romanus' success to a brilliant single combat with a lion.)

Son of the wonderfully named Theophylact the Unbearable, an Armenian pesant who had somehow saved Basil I from the Saracens at Tephricearond and had been rewarded with a place in the Imperial guard, seemingly shortly after Romanus' birth in about 870. The Armenians long found success in Constantinople - Leo V, "The Armenian" was an Armenian adventurer; Basil I the son of Armenian deportees; and John I Tzimises an Armenian nobles - but Romanus I reign saw an Armenian in the position of senior emperor, running the church, and, in the person of John Curcuas, the army.

As Emperor, Romanus proved highly capable, though he seems always to have felt the shame of his usurption. Though an often ruthless politician, he was also a deeply pious man. (It was considered a mark of his admirable piety that he gave orders for the banishment of the Jews.)

Romanus' fatal flaw proved to be his dynastic ambitions. Not content merely to have made the legitimate emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, his son-in-law - and thus making him the grandfather of the future emperor Romanus II - he raised his sons to positions to which they clearly proved themselves undeserving. Of all his children, his daughter Helena, the rightful emperor's spouse, is the only one who seems to have had any principles or courage.

Romanus crowned three of his sons - Christopher, Stephen and Constantine - and then tried to coopt the church as well via his youngest son, the eunech Theophylact. Basil I had been cynical enough to place his own young son on the Patriarchal throne, the boy dying shortly thereafter, but few Patriarchs have been as patently unsuitable for the position as Theophylact. Amiable and well-intentioned, Theophylact's passion was horses, and he turned his palace into a veritable stable. Though he went through the motions of his duties competently, Theophylact's blatant apathy - he attempted to lessen his boredom by introducing miracle-pantomimes into Church services - shocked society.