This post is the third in a series about the most prevalent modern myths about the Crusades and how to refute them.
Anna Comnena was the thirteen-year-old daughter of Emperor Alexius I when the initial group of Crusaders marched into Constantinople during the First Crusade in the late eleventh century. Later, as a woman in her forties, she wrote the Alexiad, an account of the events of her father’s reign. In describing the arrival of these warriors from the West, Anna expressed the skeptical belief that the Crusaders (or at least the knights) had come simply to “get richer” and with the “ulterior purpose… to seize the capital [Constantinople] itself.”[1]
