This section doesn’t have a lot of folklore, because it doesn’t need it. This is the point where real history and Mythic European history diverge. The Doge, one of the richest and best connected men in the world, offers anything to save his wife, who is rotting to death. In the real world she dies. In our game world, something else happens and it kicks off an alternate, if hidden, history.
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The dogado of Selvo was perhaps less remarkable for the potentiality of the new Doge—strong man as he was no doubt—than for the personality of the haughty princess he brought to Venice to share the honours of the ducal State.
Dogaressa Teodora Ducas was the daughter of the Emperor Constantine and her betrothal to the Doge of Venice was brought about by her brother Michael, who in 1067 succeeded his father as Emperor of the East. She landed on the Lido first for Mass, and then at the Piazzetta, wearing the imperial diadem with which her brother had crowned her at the nuptials in Constantinople. At the same time everybody noted that His Serenity the Doge’s bonnet of Estate was encircled by a richly wrought band of pure red Grecian gold, encrusted with precious stones ! No Doge had ever worn such a conspicuous mark of royalty, and many a noble lord looked askance at the wearer—doubting in his mind whether it was intended as an emblem of sovereignty ! Feelings of alarm filled the minds of the citizens and the welcome accorded to the ducal pair was cold and formal.
The new Dogaressa was accompanied by a very numerous retinue, such as no previous consort of the Chief Magistrate had presumed to gather round her. Secretly the Venetians liked well their Doges and their nobles to contract splendid foreign marriages, and no “Brides of Venice” were more thoroughly admired than the ” donne Greche fonte di cortesia at amorevolezza !
” Teodora unfortunately did nothing to propitiate the insular prejudice of the men and women of Venice. Her autocratic bearing and her ill-dis- guised contempt for the “women of the Rialto” caused head-shakings and tongue-waggings in every circle of society. From the first she was as un- popular as her consort, the Doge, was beloved.
In the Ducal Palace the Dogaressa set up an Imperial Court and required the nobles and state
officials to render the honours to which she had been accustomed at Constantinople. She had her ladies of honour, her chamberlains, her pages and her slaves. Superbly robed and glittering with precious ornaments, Teodora Selvo offered an amazing contrast to Elena—the homely consort of the first ” Grand ” Doge—Agnello Badoero ! Teodora was an Athenian of the Athenians, with all the predilections of a Sultana of the harem. Pomp and pettiness were strongly mingled in her character. The corruption of the Byzantine Court, in which she had been reared, had laid their indelible marks upon her : she shocked the susceptibilities of the simple, homely Venetians by her voluptuousness, her petulance, and her extravagance.
Still, there was something about the Dogaressa which attracted sympathy, for were not the people of Rialto and her linked-up islets, descendants of Greek colonists in Veneto, and did they not pre- serve many traits and idiosyncrasies of their ancestors! Then, too, many a sea-faring Venetian, conquered by the artifices of Cupid in the Orient, had brought home a Greek bride to be the mother of his children, so the ways of the Dogaressa were not altogether without appeal.
Teodora lived delicately : the plain fare and simple service of her consort’s establishment, which also obtained too in the casas of the nobles, were not to her liking. She introduced exquisite cooking —the Greek cuisine in place of the crude joints and inartistic concoctions of the Roman menu. Costly wines and liqueurs from Syria and the remote East supplanted the heavier beverages of the lagunes.
Her table service was of pure gold and costly rock crystal. Unlike the primitive ways of the unsophisticated Venetians, who were content to convey their food to their mouths with their fingers or with ladles, and to share cup and plate, the Dogaressa introduced a Grecian fork—an entirely new instrument in Western Empire—which was of solid gold, two-pronged, and beautifully chased, with which she ate dainty morsels, neatly carved and arranged by the eunuchs of the table. Moreover, she made constant use of finger glass and finger-napkin—things which were un- known in Venice. Great wax candles were lighted after dark, and stuck into costly sconces—in spite of the archaic regulations of the curfew.
Teodora Selvo rarely walked in the Piazza—the gondola was for her an ideal conveyance, it ministered to her love of ease and admirably served her secret flirtations. In public she always wore gloves, scented with aromatic herbs, and in this she set a fashion, which, no Venetian noble or simple of to- day, fails to observe. Into the mysteries of the Dogaressa’s toilet we may also most fortunately be admitted, through the grace of those who kept her diaries. The air of her apartments was perfumed each day before she rose for her levee. Beautiful scent-scatterers of blown grass, and elegant pastille stands were carried up and down by her attendants. This little bit of extravagance we may all thoroughly endorse, for doubtless, in her day, the odours of the canals were as bad if not worse, than in our own !
The morning bath was administered with perfumed water, or white wine, and sometimes with freshly-gathered dew from the flower petals and green sward of her garden. If the Latins were especially careful as to washing their feet, the Greeks were equally particular about their heads : they found the douche healthful and invigorating. The more exquisite Athenians had a special perfume and wash for each portion of the body. It was said that simple-minded peasant Paris was directly influenced, in the bestowal of his golden apple, by the seductive odours exhaled by the massaged, painted, powdered, well-laved person of the fascinating Queen of Beauty !
No doubt Teodora carried with her into the Ducal Palace a full battery of toilet requisites and delicacies—for example : for her arms, sweetened mint, clearest oil of palms for her lips and breast, sweet marjoram mixed with the pomades for hair and eyebrows, and for knees and neck essence of ground-ivy—such was the custom of her people. The Dogaressa’s clothing, if not quite “of fine gold ” was of the richest damask and the fairest linen procurable ; her marriage coffer was full of marvels. Everything she wore was heavily scented, so that wherever she went a delicious perfume was scattered around and about.
Probably Cleopatra was Teodora’s best-loved model, not indeed that she ever went so far as to dissolve pearls in sour wine or place biting vipers in her bosom ! There is a very beautiful painting by a pupil of Paris Bordone—perhaps by the master himself—of a ” Gentildonna Venetta” in the dress of the Eastern queen—may it not have been inspired by the story of the Dogaressa Teodora !
What a thousand pities it is that art was too crude in the eleventh century to permit of an actual portrait of the Venetian Queen of Fashion Teodora ! We know not whether she was fair or dark, tall or short, embonpoint or thin. The probabilities are that she was blonde, as most Greek beauties were, but any attractions her figure may have offered as a bride possibly were diminished when she became a matron. High living, sensuous conduct and idleness bring their punishment to most men and women, and Teodora Selvo was no exception to the rule.
Plain old Pietro Diancono — that unmercifully exact chronicler of things Venetian – speaks of Teodora’s “Tanta delicatezza” ” He says:— “Her Serenity’s sinfiil voluptuousness and inordinate self indulgence brought with them a judgement. About two years after her marriage with Lord Selvo the Dogaressa was attacked by a putrid fever. The malady became at last so insufferably distasteful that the proud daughter of Constantinople was an object in her latest moments of mingled compassion and abhorrence to all around her. She was left to die alone almost, the victim of outrageous splendour and outrageous uncleaness!”
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So, Teodora was dying, and a cthonic power gave her extended life. This bound her to the cults of Venice, and in turn, it gave Venice to the Master of Games, the powerful faerie that says it was once the leper-magus Tytalus. In the centre of the City In The Mirror, the passions of the mortals are distilled into a human statue made of the world’s clearest glass. This is a vessel for a power from deep Faerie. Is it Diana, or is it Venus, the one Titan who survived the Titanomachy without any constraint? Perhaps it is Prosepina, the Queen of Hades and Riches and Flowers. The Tytalus cult tried to call her up before, and were corrupted by a demonic imposter. Could it be that the Archnecromantrix, Gurona the Fetid, served a power that has a new high priestess in Teodora? Time, and our further researches, will tell.
Games From Folktales 