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Zoya Porfirorodnaya – the empress who preserved the face of 30 years old until old age
She was frighteningly good-looking, and seemed to defy her age.
Probably, the Byzantine Empress Zoya Porphyrogenitus revealed the secret of eternal youth, which has remained unknown to the most famous scientists to this day. Its beauty has been praised for a thousand years, including by our contemporaries. Fans of Boris Akunin, in particular, could read about the Byzantine empress in the novel The Devil’s Spit. Here is what the book says about this woman:
Zoya Porphyrogenic (circa 978 to June 1050 A.D.) – Byzantine empress from 1042. She was married three times. She died childless
“Do you want me to tell you what Zoya Porphyrogenitus was like?” – All her life she was possessed by two strong passions, two dreams: one seemingly impossible, the other, it would seem, easily realizable. Zoya wished, first of all, to be forever beautiful, never to grow old. And secondly, to become a mother … Until the end of her days, Zoya remained young and dazzlingly beautiful. Evil tongues claimed that this miracle did not happen magically, but thanks to ointments, rubbing, tricky mineral baths and other tricks that Zoe devoted most of the day to. It is true that she never went out into the sun, preserving the whiteness of her skin, and maintained a special warm humidity in her chambers, which does not form wrinkles. But are there many princesses or patrician women who make no less effort to preserve their beauty? Which of them managed to look like thirty at the age of seventy? And the empress, when I saw her for the last time, was as radiant as during the reign of her father Constantine the Eighth, when I first came to court. Zoya really managed to deceive the time, which very few people succeed in. But she could not do the easiest and most common thing – to give birth to a child. This is not surprising when you consider that for the first time she was married off at fifty. Are you smiling, noble Nikola? In vain. The porphyry princess is like the rarest pearl. … But the groom was even older than the bride. No matter how hard they tried, God did not give them children. Zoya believed that her husband was to blame for this. She got a young lover, and ordered her husband to be killed. She married a favorite who was thirty years younger … The Empress was getting younger and fresher, and her young husband, on the contrary, was losing his beauty, zhuh and growing old with unnatural speed … It seemed that she was sucking juices out of him and still could not get enough of them. In the end, the emperor died, barely reaching his thirties. “
And what was she really like?
According to the Chronography of Mikhail Psellus, the main historiographer of the Empress’s court, Zoya was distinguished not only by her incredible beauty, but also by her reckless behavior, combined with unprecedented generosity and cruelty. She loved flattery to the point of unconsciousness. As soon as one of the confidants said a subtle compliment, Zoya immediately showered him with honors and expensive gifts.
She didn’t know how to run the state, and she didn’t want to. Empress Zoe, in all honesty, was a rather mediocre person and a complete lazy person. She spent most of her time in the palace or in an impromptu laboratory, where the servants, on her advice, “conjured” over the invention of various creams that rejuvenate the skin. Surprisingly, the Byzantine ruler managed to achieve amazing results. Even when she was over 70, she retained the youthful beauty of her face, the whiteness of which all Byzantine beauties envied. Only a slight tremor of the hands and a slightly bent back betrayed age.
Empress Zoe, mosaic element in Hagia Sophia (Istanbul, Turkey, XNUMXth century)
The Empress was passionate about men. Probably, a long abstinence within the walls of the gynequee (a special place reserved for women – Approx. Ed.) played a role in relation to the stronger sex. For the lost years, by the way, the Byzantine empress played back with interest: real debauchery flourished in the palace, which did not bother Zoya at all.
Towards the end of her life, in the words of Michael Psellus, the ruler had become “unstable in her mind.” She was seized with rage at the slightest offense of her subjects: the poor fellows faced a terrible and painful punishment – blindness. And if not for the intervention of Zoya’s last husband, Emperor Constantine, many people, according to the court historiographer, would have their eyes ripped out for no reason.
And yet Zoya Porfirodnaya will forever remain in world history thanks to her beauty, which despised old age and emerged victorious from the eternal battle. And how can one fail to recall the words of Mikhail Psellus, captured in the “Chronography”: “Who did not know her for years, would have thought that in front of him is a very young girl.”