gender and gender stereotypes in an unusual way. Like her male counterparts, she characterizes women along the typical stereotypes, such as being "liable to tears and as cowardly in the face of danger". Despite this, women in the Alexiad never cry, with the exception of Alexios' funeral, during which grief is the appropriate cultural response. Likewise, none of the female characters act in a cowardly way. She points to her own gender in a similar way when mentioning her own tears while writing certain events. Immediately, however, she informs the reader that she will stop crying in order to properly return to her duty of history, an episode which she repeats twice in the narrative. By so doing, she shows a desire to control aspects that are, for her culture, feminine. Overall, however, Anna concerns herself primarily with intellect, which she attributes to both men and women, and allows for women to actively break out of societal gender roles in the Alexiad. Her personal attitudes, along with the lack of comparable sources from female authors in that era, make the Alexiad considered by some a poor source to use when gauging how average women in Byzantium felt about the First Crusade. Gender and style Anna Komnene's unusual style of writing history has been attributed to her gender. Her style is noteworthy in that it included both a history of her father's actions during the First Crusade, and her reactions to some of these events. Her opinions and commentary on particular events in an otherwise historical text have been assigned to her gender both positively and negatively. This interpretation of her histories is known as a "gendered history", meaning it is both the history of Alexios and of Anna herself through her particular style, which is not seen in male authors. While the Roman historian Edward Gibbon saw this "gendered" narrative to betray "in every page the vanity of a female author", with some scholars agreeing with him, other scholars claim that this style might be indicative of Anna's mentor, Michael Psellos. Some take this even further to suggest that Anna used Psellos' Chronographia as a model for her personal narration in her history and took his style even further, suggesting it was not her gender but her influences that led to her writing style. Anna Komnene is considered unique for her time in the intensity by which she integrates her