crisis and eventual civil war after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Because many of the empire's governors went to the capital with their soldiers to seize power after the capture of emperor Romanos IV, the Anatolian frontier was largely left undefended against the Seljuk Empire. The Normans permanently pushed the Byzantines from Southern Italy in April 1071. Modern views and depictions in literature Bulgarian commentator Alexander Kiossev wrote in Understanding the Balkans: "The hero [of] a nation might be the villain of its neighbour ... The Byzantine emperor Basil the Murderer of Bulgarians, a crucial Greek pantheon figure, is no less important as [a] subject of hatred for our national mythology". During the 20th century in Greece, interest in Basil II led to a number of biographies and historical novels about him. One of these is Basil Bulgaroktonos (1964) by historical fiction writer . Written as a sequel to his previous work Theophano (1963) which focuses on Basil's mother, it examines Basil's life through three fictional narrators and has been continuously reprinted since 1964. Rosemary Sutcliff's 1976 historical fiction novel Blood Feud depicts Basil II from the point of view of a member of his recently created Varangian Guard. Penelope Delta's second novel Ton Kairo tou Voulgaroktonou (In the Years of the Bulgar-Slayer) is also set during the reign of Basil II. It was inspired by correspondence with the historian Gustave Schlumberger, a renowned specialist on the Byzantine Empire, and published in the early years of the 20th century, a time when the Struggle for Macedonia again set Greeks and Bulgarians in bitter enmity with each other. Ion Dragoumis, who was Delta's lover and was deeply involved in that struggle, in 1907 published the book Martyron kai Iroon Aima (Martyrs' and Heroes' Blood), which is resentful towards anything remotely Bulgarian. He urges Greeks to follow the example of Basil II: "Instead of blinding so many people, Basil should have better killed them instead. On one hand these people would not suffer as eyeless survivors, on the other the sheer number of Bulgarians would have diminished by 15 000, which is something very useful." Later in the book, Dragoumis foresees the appearance of "new Basils" who would "cross the entire country and will look for Bulgarians in mountains, caves, villages and forests and will make them flee in refuge or kill them". In the video game Civilization VI, Basil leads