Christmas. Michael sent messages to his co-conspirators threatening to reveal their identity, whereupon his partisans freed him and murdered Leo V during the Christmas mass in the palace chapel of St. Stephen. Reign Michael was immediately proclaimed Emperor, while still wearing prison chains on his legs. Later the same day, he was crowned by patriarch Theodotus I of Constantinople. In his internal policy, Michael II supported iconoclasm, but he tacitly encouraged reconciliation with the iconodules, whom he generally stopped persecuting and allowed to return from exile. These included the former patriarch Nikephoros and Theodore of Stoudios, who failed, however, to persuade the emperor to abandon iconoclasm. One of the few victims of the Emperor's policy was the future patriarch Methodios I. Michael's accession whetted the appetite of his former comrade-in-arms Thomas the Slav, who set himself up as rival emperor in Anatolia and successfully transferred his forces into Thrace, effectively besieging the capital in December 821. Although Thomas did not win over all the Anatolian themes, he secured the support of the naval theme and their ships, allowing him to tighten his grip on Constantinople. In his quest for support, Thomas presented himself as a champion of the poor, reduced taxation, and concluded an alliance with Al-Ma'mun of the Abbasid Caliphate, having himself crowned Emperor by the Patriarch of Antioch Job. With the support of Omurtag of Bulgaria, Michael II forced Thomas to lift his siege of Constantinople in the spring of 823. Michael besieged Thomas in Arcadiopolis and forced his surrender in October. Michael inherited a seriously weakened military and was unable to prevent the conquest of Crete in 824 by 10,000 Arabs (who had 40 ships), or to recover the island with an expedition in 826. In 827 the Arabs also invaded Sicily, taking advantage of local infighting, and besieged Syracuse. Thekla and Michael had only one known son, the Emperor Theophilos (813 – 20 January 842). The existence of a daughter called Helena is possible but there is a contradiction between different sources. Helena is known as the wife of Theophobos, a patrician executed in 842 for conspiring to gain the throne for himself. George Hamartolos and Theophanes report him marrying the sister of the Empress Theodora. Joseph Genesius records Theophobos marrying the sister of the Emperor Theophilos. Whether Helena was sister or sister-in-law to Theophilos is thus unclear. After the death of Thekla, in 823, Michael