Maria, wife of Ivan Vladislav

Maria was the last empress consort (tsaritsa) of the First Bulgarian Empire. She was the wife of Tsar Ivan Vladislav of Bulgaria and was involved in political manoeuvring.

Life Maria was a daughter of Boris II, tsar of Bulgaria from 969-977 (though he spent 971-977 as a captive of the Byzantines). Maria together with her children were sent to Constantinople, where she adopted the name Zoe and was granted the title zostē patrikia (lady-in-waiting to the Empress) in 1019. Her family was integrated into the Byzantine court and inter-married with some of the most prominent Byzantine noble families.

In 1029 Maria together with her son Presian entered a conspiracy against emperor Romanos III Argyros. The plot was discovered, Presian was blinded and Maria was exiled to a monastery in the Thracesian Theme.

Origins No primary source mentions the ancestry of Maria, but Christian Settipani has noted the possibility that she may be the daughter of Tsar Boris II of Bulgaria and a Byzantine noblewoman. Boris II was the eldest surviving son of Tsar Peter I of Bulgaria and Maria (renamed Eirene) Lekapena, a granddaughter of Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos of Byzantium. Boris resided in Constantinople twice, initially as a hostage and then as a royal captive of Emperor John I Tzimiskes, when the emperor divested Boris II of his royal title and compensated him with the rank of a Byzantine magistros. During his sojourn in Constantinople Boris II had a relationship with an unknown woman by whom he left several children. Settipani believes that one of these children may have been Maria since: A union between the Krum and Kometopoulos dynasties is suggested by the later claim of Tsar Kaloyan of Bulgaria that Tsars Peter I (father of Boris II) and Samuel of Bulgaria, were his ancestors; a claim which was investigated and confirmed by Pope Innocent III. One of the sons of Ivan Vladislav and Maria was named Presian / Prousianos (briefly Tsar of Bulgaria in 1018), which was also the name of the great-grandfather of Tsar Peter I, suggesting that the blood of the Krum dynasty had been transmitted to the children of the couple. A Bulgarian priest, Paisij de Chilendar, identifies Maria as "a Greek woman, daughter of a magistros", the title of Boris II in Constantinople, although Settipani notes that the reliability of this late source is unclear. Maria led the negotiations to submit to Byzantine sovereignty following the death of her husband whilst he was besieging Dyrrhachium, suggesting that she possessed the requisite status and prestige, both for the Bulgarians and the Byzantines, to do so. Her hypothetical descent from Emperor Romanos I of Byzantium via her grandmother, Maria Lekapena, wife of Tsar Peter I, would explain her authority in the eyes of her former enemies as well as the lenient terms of the Bulgarian surrender.