Irene of Athens

Was she a good ruler, Veeky Forums? Was she effective? Was she qt?

I've listened to two different sources about her, and they seem to contradict each other. One was Lost to the West by Lars Brownsworth, where she was depicted as somewhat of a disaster IIRC, where he listed blinding her own son and trying to marry Charlemagne among some of her actions, which angered her subjects.

My other source was the Late Antiquity lecture by Professor Thomas F. X. Noble, who made her out as an extremely effective ruler who made the best out of the bad situation she was put in. According to his reading of her rule, she quelled iconoclasm (somewhat) peacefully with the second Council of Nicaea (and rusing the soldiers loyal to Leo IV when they tried to break it up), had victories against the Slavs and Arabs, and generally held the Byzantines together and kept her idiot son in check.

I guess I should just listen to more sources to get a more complete picture, but I wanted to know if anyone here had an opinion on her.

Why is she portrayed as cracker?

YOU MEAN "IRENE OF KHAZARIA", NOT "IRENE OF ATHENS".

I'd say she was more good than bad. Blinding her own son was cruel and reprehensible to our modern sensibilities but it made sense politically to secure her own position. A marriage to Charlemagne may have pissed off some snobby Orthodox Greeks but again it made sense politically; imagine the sheer military and political might of a union between the Frankish Empire and the Roman Empire; this legit would have restored Rome to its former glory, and helped fix the divide between the Christian churches.

She was generally a good administrator and wasn't a fanatic on any issues, and indeed defended the borders against the Muslims. She was a good ruler, but I wouldn't say a great one. She did everything well but not much exceptionally (though nowadays even a mediocre female ruler is elevated to greatness solely because of her sex).

>blinding your own son
That's so fucked up it's not even "down to sensibilites of age". Even her contemporaries saw it as something horrific.
A mother killing her own child is beyond psychopathic. So fuck her accomplishments. Inhumane cunt.

>be a good ruler
>lose your country and get hanged, quartered, and burnt alive in front of her court and family by her son
>son recovers from blindness
she deserves the pits of hell for her evil and her stupidity of thinking catholics would ever help her in exchange for her used-up vagina

This
Not these

why would an emperor want her? Shes a used-up slut who butchers her own family.

They saw it as horrific because she was a woman, and thus held to a different standard. Blinding and castrating your own unwanted sons and brothers was standard practice for the Byzzies, it was done because they had a prohibition against cripples becoming Emperor.

>They saw it as horrific because she was a woman,
t. retard