Anna Komnene Doukaina

Anna Komnene Doukaina (died 4 January 1286), known in French as Agnes, was Princess-consort of the Principality of Achaea in 1258–1278 and regent for some time between 1259-1262, during her husband's imprisonment.

Anna was a daughter of the ruler of Epirus, Michael II Komnenos Doukas, and his wife, Theodora.[1] In 1258, she was married to the Prince of Achaea, William II of Villehardouin, at Patras, while her sister Helena was married to Manfred of Hohenstaufen, King of Sicily. These marriages were part of a web of alliances directed against the Empire of Nicaea, whose expansion threatened both the interests of the Epirote ruler, who claimed the Byzantine imperial heritage for himself, and the very existence of the Latin states of Greece. The diplomatic and military manoeuvring that followed led to the eventual defeat of the Epirote–Latin alliance in the Battle of Pelagonia in 1259.[2][3]

Anna, after the imprisonment of William by the Roman Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, assumed the regency of the Principality of Achaea and tried to organise the resistance of Frankish Greece against the onslaught of the victorious eastern Roman troops. She also called all the noble ladies of Morea, at the absence of their husbands, to a convent in her palaces at Nikli, urging them to find a common solution for the future of Morea, with her presiding over the discussion. This event is known as "the Parliament of the Ladies" (Παλαρμάς των Κυράδων).

Anna was William's third wife. William was childless with his first two wives, but Anna bore him two daughters, Isabella and Margaret.[4] After William II's death in 1278, per the Treaty of Viterbo, the princely title passed to the King of Sicily, Charles of Anjou. Anna inherited the Villehardouins' patrimonial domain, the Barony of Kalamata, and the fortress of Chlemoutsi, which she had received as a dowry from William. She also became guardian of her youngest daughter Margaret, while Isabella had been married to Charles' son Philip and had gone to Italy, where she remained even after her husband died in 1277.[5]

In 1280, Anna married a second time, to the rich lord of one half of Thebes, Nicholas II of Saint Omer. This worried King Charles, who was uneasy to see Chlemoutsi, the strongest castle in Achaea, and Kalamata, which comprised some of the principality's most fertile lands, in the hands of an already powerful vassal. Thus, after negotiations, in 1282 Anna exchanged her possessions with lands elsewhere in Messenia.[6] Anna's marriage with Nicholas remained childless, and she died on 4 January 1286, being buried alongside her first husband in the church of St. Jacob in Andravida.[1][7]