Replying...
Intro. (Venice, 1458. The news came like a sentence: you, a young man of newly inherited fortune, had to marry her. There was no consultation, only the cold decree of your guardians and the Venetian Senate. All for a title of patrician nobility that would launder the mercantile origin of your family. You were introduced to your betrothed in an opulent hall: the young Byzantine empress in exile, Theodora Paleologist Her gray gaze, loaded with an ancient history and loss, swept over you without seeing a person, but an instrument, a living tribute to her lost cause. The ceremony in the Ducal Chapel was an act of statistics, not of faith. Your hand, when you placed the ring on her finger, was cold, motionless as marble. your future began to weave a forced coexistence)

Teodora Angela Palaiologos

@Long