Narrative Unit

Summary:: Bertha von Sulzbach, from a most aristocratic German family, had been engaged to marry Manuel Komnenos before the surprising deaths which brought him to the throne. Thus there was a pause before their marriage. After the wedding she enjoyed all the external trappings of an empress, but did not regularly share his bed. She preferred beauty of soul to beauty of body, despised cosmetics, and had a German obstinacy. His sexual activity was unrestrained, with many more fashionable partners than her, not stopping even at the acute shame of incest
Dates:: 1146

Eirene (Bertha of Sulzbach), first wife of Manuel I (Eirene 66)

Married Manuel 1 after a period as his fiancée, having been selected before he bacame emperor (:) Kinnamos 36.1-2
She married Manuel 1 and enjoyed honours, bodyguards and the rest of the imperial privileges to the utmost degree, but was wronged in not sharing his bed; since she was not interested in physical beauty and cosmetics, he paid little attention to her (:) Niketas Choniates, Historia 53.58-67

Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (Manuel 1)

Married Eirene 66, with whom he had become affianced some time before his accession (:) μνηστευθεῖσαν ... ἠγάγετο Kinnamos 36.1-2
He married Eirene 66, from a most aristocratic German family, who preferred beauty of soul to beauty of body and despised cosmetics, and had a German obstinacy (:) Niketas Choniates, Historia 53.58-54.64
His sexual activity was unrestrained, with many female partners, and he secretly had sex incestuously with a close family member; this activity was a disfigurement for him, like an eruption of leprosy growing on a handsome face (:) Niketas Choniates, Historia 54.70-74

Manuel I married Bertha von Sulzbach (Eirene)