Anatolia. Nikephoros took Cilicia and even Aleppo in 962, sacking the palace of the Emir and taking possession of his treasures. In the meantime Leo Phokas and Marianos Argyros had countered Magyar incursions into the Byzantine Balkans. After a lengthy hunting expedition Romanos II took ill and died on 15 March 963. Rumor attributed his death to poison administered by his wife Theophano, but there is no evidence of this, and Theophano would have been risking much by exchanging the secure status of a crowned Augusta with the precarious one of a widowed regent of her very young children. Romanos II's reliance on his wife and on bureaucrats like Joseph Bringas had resulted in a relatively capable administration, but this built up resentment among the nobility, which was associated with the military. In the wake of Romanos' death, his Empress Dowager, now regent to the two co-emperors, her underage sons, was quick to marry the general Nikephoros Phokas and to acquire another general, John Tzimiskes, as her lover, having them both elevated to the imperial throne in succession. The rights of her sons were safeguarded, however, and eventually, when Tzimiskes died at war, her eldest son Basil II became senior emperor. Family Romanos' first marriage, in September 944, was to Bertha, illegitimate daughter of Hugh of Arles, King of Italy, who changed her name to Eudokia after her marriage. She died in 949, her marriage unconsummated. By his second wife Theophano he had at least three children: Basil II, born in 958 Constantine VIII, born in 960 Anna Porphyrogenita, born 13 March 963 Gallery See also List of Byzantine emperors Notes References Leo the Deacon, Histories Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700 By Frederick Lewis Weis, Line 147-20 John Julius Norwich (1991). Byzantium: The Apogee. Attribution External links 10th-century Byzantine emperors Macedonian dynasty Constantine VII 930s births 963 deaths 950s in the Byzantine Empire 960s in the Byzantine Empire Year of birth uncertain Sons of Byzantine emperors