in precedence over Constantine VII. Fearing that Romanos would allow Constantine VII to succeed him instead of them, his younger sons Stephen and Constantine arrested their father on 20 (or 16) December 944, carried him off to the Princes' Islands and compelled him to become a monk. When they threatened the position of Constantine VII, however, the people of Constantinople revolted, and Stephen and Constantine were likewise stripped of their imperial rank and sent into exile to their father. Romanos died on 15 June 948, and was buried as the other members of his family in the church of Myrelaion. Having lived long under constant threat of deposition—or worse—by the Lekapenoi family, Constantine VII was extremely resentful of them. In his De Administrando Imperio manual written for his son and successor, Romanos II, he minces no words about his late father-in-law: "the lord Romanus the Emperor was an idiot and an illiterate man, neither bred in the high imperial manner, nor following Roman custom from the beginning, nor of imperial or noble descent, and therefore the more rude and authoritarian in doing most things ... for his beliefs were uncouth, obstinate, ignorant of what is good, and unwilling to adhere to what is right and proper." Family Romanos I's only named wife is Theodora, who died in 922. However, genealogical and chronological considerations have led to the hypothesis that his three eldest children may have been born from an otherwise unattested first marriage. Romanos had at least eight legitimate and at least one illegitimate children, leading to numerous aristocratic descendants and connections in the Middle Byzantine period, including every emperor for the next century. Christopher, co-emperor from 921 to 931 (senior co-emperor from 927); he married the augusta Sophia (died after 944), daughter of the magistros and patrikios Niketas Helladikos; they were parents of: Maria (supposedly renamed Eirene, "Peace"), died before 967 (963?); she married 927 Emperor Peter I of Bulgaria ; they were parents, among others, of: Boris II, emperor of Bulgaria, died 977; he married and left issue Roman, emperor of Bulgaria, died 997 Romanos, possibly co-emperor, died young, before 927 Michael Porphyrogennetos, born after 921, possibly given quasi-imperial honors before 945, subsequently magistros and raiktor, died after 963; he married and was the father of: Helene; she married Konstantinos Radenos, protospatharios; left issue Sophia; she married Pankratios Taronites, patrikios; left issue unnamed daughter, who died after 961;