Constantine’s father dies unexpectedly, making Constantine emperor at age nine with Irini as Regent. Abbess Thekla’s loyalty to Irini shifts to Constantine as she watches Irini block his authority and keep the power herself. Irini makes Constantine wed the disliked Maria, prevents the Senate from naming him Emperor in his own right at age 18, and imprisons him when he tries to stop her henchmen from amassing wealth and power. Constantine’s army friends free him, arrest her, and raise him to the throne. Resourceful as ever, Irini will not be thwarted. Can Thekla prevent them from murdering each other?

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The Empress Irini Series is a coming of age, four-part YA series set in the Roman Empire of the East - brimming with fear, intrigue and violence. In this series, Janet McGiffin presents us with a world in which banal realities like hunger and survival sit cheek by jowl with the fantastical worlds of Medieval Christianity and Greek Mythology: Fates, curses, miracles and the ghosts of bygone patriarchs. Our central character, Thekla, a seventeen year old on the run in Constantinople, must rely solely upon her own courage and quick wits to survive this vigorous, glittering capital of the East.