Atrocious Empress 2021 (2026 Update)

: Critics argue she was actually deeply self-obsessed and narcissistic , largely indifferent to the suffering within her empire while she focused almost exclusively on her own beauty and physical fitness (to the point of having gym bars installed in her royal chambers).

Byzantine Empress Irene (c. 752–803 CE) offers a different flavor of atrocity: the pious tyrant. As regent for her son, Constantine VI, Irene was an ardent supporter of icon veneration, ending the first wave of Byzantine iconoclasm. But her religious piety did not extend to family. atrocious empress

Why does history remember her this way?