Eudokia Laskarina

[Leo]

Someone told me there is a biography for Eudokia Laskarina, daughter of Theodoros II Dukas Laskaris, emperor of Byzantium, in Wikipedia.

I cannot find it, but this biography maintains she was married only once, to Guillaume Pierre de Tenda, and they had several children, "mentioned Jean I, Lucrecia married to Arnau Roger I, comte de Pailhars; Beatrice who married Guillem de Montcada; Vatatza came to Portugal in the service of Isabel of Aragon, and Violante was married to a grandson of Jaime I."

ES tells she was married twice. By her first husband is shown she had "sons" mentioned Jean (Giovanni) and Jacopo and an indication there were more, no daughters. Then ES shows that in February 1281 Eudokia married Arnau Roger I, Comte de Pailhars and by him had three daughters: Sibilla, Violante and Beatriz.

Does anyone know what the correct version is?

With many thanks.
Leo van de Pas
Canberra, Australia

[M Sjostrom]

that specific inconsistency between sources is a research controversy
between two versions.
I think nobody really is able to know which of these two versions is
correct, which incorrect. There are merely ways to weigh evidence.

the older version has been that it was Eudokia Laskarina who married twice.

newer research has postulated the likelihood that she married only once and
it actually was her eldest daughter who married Pailhars. Reasons for that
interpretation appear to me to be weighty.
Plus, as to databases, it is actually simpler to keep these two marriages
for separate ladies, and not the same lady.

naturally, these two versions cannot hold true simultaneously.

Chronologically, either seems to be possible - but only upon premise that
the count of Ventimiglia and Tenda deceased early enough.
His early death is not needed, if it was his eldest daughter who married
Pailhars. The eldest daughter may well have been born in the late 1260s,
then starting to have children herself in mid-1280s.

The real name of the eldest daughter is seemingly not known. Lucretia as
name is not at all certain. Some other material favoring this same of the
two interpretations, say that she was called Laskarina. But that was not
necessarily a baptismal name, instead it could have been a Constantinoplean
custom to pile surnames from two or more roots of the child. surnames:
Laskarina Vintimiliaina. Then there was a younger daughter who was
Batatzaina Vintimiliaina.

Whichever version is correct, still the Pailhars daughters were descended
from Laskaris emperors, and were matrilineal descendants of Eudokia and her
Bulgarian mother.