Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus

Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (905–959) was Byzantine emperor from 913 to 959, ruling alone only after 944. Son of Leo VI, he was born in the Purple Room and crowned co-emperor at two.

Regents ruled for him: the patriarch Nicholas, his mother, then from 920 his father-in-law Romanos Lekapenos, whose daughter Helena he married. After Romanos fell in 944, he removed the Lekapenoi and ruled alone.

A scholar-emperor, he wrote De Administrando Imperio and De Ceremoniis. He ordered peasant lands restored in 947 and died in 959, succeeded by his son Romanos II.