SPOILER ALERT. Do not read this post if you are not up to date with Game of Thrones…when Romanus Lekapenos was on the throne it occurred to me that there was something Stark-ish about his household.
Romanus had six legitimate children, four boys and two girls. He made Constantine VII part of his household and fathered Basil who was then castrated.
When Constantine took power he kept the eunuch Basil around and worked happily with him. I pondered then whether they had bonded over being the runts of the Lekapenos litter.
The comparison with Theon and Jon is amusing to consider. Theon would of course go on to be castrated. While Constantine was the born-in-the-purple prince who had to wait a long time to inherit his birthright. His parents marriage was also highly controversial 
The History of Byzantium 
WOW! The similarities are uncanny!
I hope you don’t mind my sharing a link to this post here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/GOTdiscussiongrp/?hc_ref=ARQEvuzpifITs6EeO0qV8wsAnxVp0XVav7G5uS55IUt9HxGjMm_-Na_Sq2fYkQE4zME
Please stick to the books rather than the terrible pulp that the TV series have turned into.
Ah well, at least he (Constantine) did not have to contend with … The Dead, unless of course you take ‘Zombies of Byzantium’ into account. Succession was always the problem don’t you think? Augustus tried so hard, and with so many potential options, to sort it out, and he had a long reign to organise it in. Still didn’t pan out as he had hoped.
I knew there was something truly Byzantine about GOT… it couldn’t just be the military influence…
😀
MartinA, you can say that again =O!
Robin’s insight is really cool, but more as a comment on the Macodonian-Lekapenos royal family. *No Spoilers* In the books, Theon is closest to Robb – Robb’s the eldest, and the closest in rank to Theon, since both are in line to inherit a high lordship. Theon sees the rest of the Stark children as too young and beneath him, partly out of embarrassment over his own position. He ignores Jon, precisely because he’s an outsider like himself, and looking at his own reflection causes him pain. (Jon is also closest to Robb – they’re close in age and natural friends, raised as brothers, Jon’s bastardy only separates them a little.)
*Show Spoilers* The show is all sorts of confused about how Jon and Theon would interact when meeting later. Jon knows Theon didn’t kill Bran and Rickon and (presumably, though this isn’t explicit) that Ramsay was the one who burned Winterfell – and it really speaks ill of his intellect/lordly decorum that his only reaction to meeting Theon is to threaten physical violence… only to later help him deal with psychological trauma with some unfounded statements. Terrible, terrible writing.
Great observation. Every time is see the map of Easteros and Westeros it reminds me of Asia Minor and Greece, or Asia Minor meets Great Britain.