Most Powerful

• #1 Alexios I Komnenos
  Byzantine Empire Imperial SovereigntyMilitaryPolitical Medieval Military CommandState Power Power: 100
  Alexios I Komnenos (1056 – 1118) was Byzantine emperor associated with Byzantine Empire. They are known for restoring imperial finances and military capacity through reforms, alliances, and controlled patronage. Imperial sovereignty operated through territorial rule, legal authority, taxation, and the ability to mobilize armies and labor across a governed domain.
• #2 Basil II
  Byzantine Empire Imperial SovereigntyMilitaryPolitical Medieval Military CommandState Power Power: 100
  Basil II (born 958) is a byzantine emperor associated with Byzantine Empire. Basil II is best known for expanding Byzantine power and using military victory to strengthen fiscal control. This profile belongs to the site’s study of imperial sovereignty and state power, where influence depends on controlling systems rather than possessing money alone. In the medieval world, power depended on dynastic authority, taxation, fortified routes, control of armed retainers, and the ability to hold together networks of loyalty across distance.
• #3 Harald Hardrada
  Byzantine EmpireEnglandKievan RusNorway MilitaryMilitary CommandPolitical Medieval Military CommandState Power Power: 100
  Harald Hardrada (c. 1015–1066) was King of Norway from 1046 to 1066 and one of the most renowned warrior-kings of the eleventh century. His life connected Scandinavian kingship, Byzantine imperial service, and North Sea rivalry in an era when personal military reputation could be converted into claims of rule. After fighting in Norway as a young man and going into exile, Harald built wealth and a hardened retinue through years of service with the Varangian Guard in Byzantium and through campaigns that linked mercenary pay to plunder. He returned to Scandinavia with resources and prestige that allowed him to contest and then share power before securing the Norwegian throne. Harald’s reign emphasized the consolidation of royal authority, the maintenance of fleets and warbands, and aggressive foreign policy. In 1066 he attempted to seize the English throne, dying at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. That defeat, occurring only weeks before the Norman conquest associated with [William the Conqueror](https://moneytyrants.com/william-the-conqueror/), made Harald’s last campaign a decisive episode in the reshaping of North Sea politics.
• #4 Manuel I Komnenos
  Byzantine Empire Imperial SovereigntyMilitaryPolitical Medieval Military CommandState Power Power: 100
  Manuel I Komnenos (born 1118) is a byzantine emperor associated with Byzantine Empire. Manuel I Komnenos is best known for Restoring imperial reach through diplomacy, war, and control of Balkan and eastern Mediterranean politics. This profile belongs to the site’s study of imperial sovereignty and state power, where influence depends on controlling systems rather than possessing money alone. In the medieval world, power depended on dynastic authority, taxation, fortified routes, control of armed retainers, and the ability to hold together networks of loyalty across distance.
• #5 Michael I Cerularius
  Byzantine Empire PoliticalReligionReligious Hierarchy Medieval Religious HierarchyState Power Power: 100
  Michael I Cerularius (c. 1000–1059) was Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople during a period when Byzantine religious leadership was tightly interwoven with imperial politics and urban authority. His tenure is most closely associated with the rupture of 1054 between Constantinople and Rome, a confrontation involving disputes over liturgical practice, jurisdiction, and competing claims of primacy. While the later history of separation developed over centuries, Cerularius became a central symbol because he leveraged the patriarchate as both a spiritual office and a political platform in the capital.The patriarchate’s power was institutional. It governed appointments, supervised monasteries and charities, and exercised influence through ecclesiastical courts that shaped marriage, inheritance, and moral discipline. In a society where law and religion overlapped, such authority had direct economic consequences: it affected property transfers, the management of endowments, and the legitimacy of rulers and factions. Cerularius used this institutional position to resist Latin influence and to assert Constantinople’s autonomy, clashing with papal envoys of Pope Leo IX (https://moneytyrants.com/pope-leo-ix/). His downfall and exile in 1058–1059 also demonstrate the limits of patriarchal power when imperial authority turned against him.
• #6 Photius
  Byzantine Empire PoliticalReligionReligious Hierarchy Medieval Religious HierarchyState Power Power: 100
  Photius (c. 810–893) was a Byzantine scholar and church leader who served as Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in a period of intense rivalry over ecclesiastical authority, jurisdiction, and imperial diplomacy. His rapid elevation from lay intellectual to patriarch became the trigger for a dispute that involved emperors, rival patriarchs, and the papacy. The resulting “Photian controversy” was not simply a quarrel about personalities. It exposed competing models of church governance and the political stakes of who controlled appointments, missionary jurisdictions, and the legal authority of ecclesiastical courts.Photius’s influence rested on institutional mechanisms typical of religious hierarchy: the patriarchate’s ability to appoint bishops, enforce discipline, and define the boundaries of orthodoxy. In the Byzantine state-church system, these powers intersected with wealth and property, because ecclesiastical courts shaped marriage and inheritance disputes and because episcopal and monastic offices managed significant assets. Photius also operated on the level of diplomacy. Conflicts over the Christianization and ecclesiastical alignment of Bulgaria, for example, carried long-term strategic consequences for taxation, tribute, and geopolitical orientation. Later disputes involving Michael I Cerularius (https://moneytyrants.com/michael-i-cerularius/) would echo similar patterns, but Photius’s era provides an earlier and clearer view of how doctrine, jurisdiction, and imperial strategy could fuse into one struggle for authority.
• #7 Empress Theodora
  Byzantine Empire Imperial SovereigntyPoliticalReligion AncientAncient and Classical State Power Power: 79
  Empress Theodora (c. 500 – 548) was the wife of Emperor Justinian I and one of the most influential women of the Byzantine imperial court. She is remembered as a political actor whose authority was expressed through proximity to the emperor, mastery of court networks
• #8 Justinian I
  Byzantine Empire Imperial SovereigntyLawPolitical AncientAncient and Classical Land & TaxationState Power Power: 76
  Justinian I (482–565) was a Byzantine emperor whose reign sought to reassert imperial sovereignty through law, war, and monumental state building. He is associated with the codification of Roman law in the *Corpus Juris Civilis*, the reconstruction of Constantinople after urban unrest
• #9 Belisarius
  Byzantine EmpireMediterranean MilitaryMilitary Command AncientAncient and Classical Military Command Power: 73
  Belisarius (c. 500–565) was the most celebrated general of the reign of [Justinian I](https://moneytyrants.com/justinian-i/), and his career shows how a fiscally organized empire can project power far beyond its borders through carefully managed expeditionary warfare.