u/Choctrone

I posted about this a few hours ago, but I presented a huge element in my question that seems to be outdated now, and therefore, my question required a significant reformulation.

So, I saw several representations of what Basil II looked like during military campaigns in terms of what he was wearing. One example of this is the first image of this post. However, my question concerns the other emperors. My question is the following: are other emperors like Nikephoros II Phokas, John I Tzimiskes, Alexios I, John II, Manuel I, or others who led armies on the battlefield, wore similar military equipment (armour, weapons, clothes, etc.), or did it vary widely depending on the individuals and their personal preferences or for any other reason? Also, would they really wear a crown and not a helmet like in those images?

If you have any representations or descriptions of what these emperors were wearing during their military campaigns, I would be very interested. The case of John II particularly interests me, but the others I named do too. Also, I understood from one of you in my previous post that there might be a passage in the Alexiad that describes Alexios I's armour. If you have an idea of the approximate place where it is presented, I could go and see for myself in my copy of the book.

I have always imagined emperors, such as Basil II, with the kind of equipment and clothes depicted in the first and second images when they were on military campaigns. However, I was recently confronted with another reality:

>E2 Emperor in parade armour, c. 1017
Though armour such as this, complete with crown, is frequently depicted in contemporary sources being worn by Emperors in battle this is undoubtedly artistic licence, and there is little doubt that in reality it was reserved for state occasions. Probably equipment more like that of C1 was worn on campaign. However, more functional versions of the gold armbands, sometimes of scale but more alien of iron, appear in many sources from the 11th century onwards, often engraved to look like pteruges.

Ian Heath (Author) and Angus McBride (Illustrator), Byzantine Armies (886–1118), London, Bloomsbury Publishing, 1979, p. 36-37.

Still, the emperors also seem to have brought more prestigious clothing during their expeditions, even if they did not wear it in battle. At least that is what I understood after reading an article on Manuel I and his expedition in Antioch in 1159. It describes in detail the emperor's prestigious clothing and crown. This is what is represented in the third image (Lynn Jones and Henry Maguire, « A description of the jousts of Manuel I Komnenos », Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, volume 26, 2002, p. 104-148).

So I was wondering if you knew more about what emperors like Nikephoros II Phokas, John I Tzimiskes, Basil II, Alexios I, John II, Manuel I, or others who led armies on the battlefield wore or carried as military equipment and clothes during their campaigns.