King B é la III of the Á rp á d Dynasty and Byzantium—Genealogical Approach

: B é la III from the Á rp á d dynasty, who later became the King of Hungary and Croatia, was previously the heir to the Byzantine Imperial Throne. Some genealogical aspects of this unusual individual are collected in the present study. Possible archaeogenetic relevance is also discussed.


Introduction
The dynasty of the descendants of Grand Prince Árpád (* c. 845, +907, ES.II.T.153, Sokop 1993; Kristó and Makk 1996;Engel 2001;Glatz 2006;Szabados 2013) established and ruled a stable state in the Carpathian Basin for almost a half millennium, from the 9th century to the beginning of 14th century AD (Hóman andSzekf ű 1928-1934; Hóman [1940] 1943).One of the most outstanding monarchs in this period was Béla  However, from the younger brother of Géza I another line of descendants began through King (Saint) László I (* c. 1040, +1095.06.20/07.29.ES.II.T.154), who was the father of Princess Piroska/(Saint) Eirene (+1134.08.13), who married Emperor Ioannes II of Byzantium (* 1087/88, +1143.04.08.ES.II.T.175) from the Komnenos dynasty.Their son, Emperor Manuel I (* 1118, +1180.09.24,ES.II.T.175, Magdalino 1993) was, thus, a close relative of the Hungarian ruling dynasty.However, for several years, Emperor Manuel I did not have a son who could have been his heir.Considering this circumstance, in the second year of his second matrimony (1163), when he was already 45 years old, Manuel adopted Prince Béla, the second-born son of his close relative, King Géza II of Hungary (Béla was the great-great grandson of the brother of Manuel's maternal grandfather: these relations are schematically shown in Chart A1).At this time (1163) Hungary was ruled by King István III (* 1147, +1172.03.04,ES.II.T.154), who was only one or two years older than Béla, and, thus, the departure of the younger brother would avoid the possibility of (eventual) discordances of power.
Following the adoption agreement (Kristó and Makk 1981;Moravcsik 1988; Olajos 2015; Baják 2015, 2021), Béla, who was 13-15 years old at this time, went to Constantinople and soon became despotes (a title coined for his particular role in the Empire), and obtained an intensive and thorough education as the heir to the imperial throne (Makk 1982(Makk , 1985(Makk , 1989;;Treadgold 1997;Ostrogorsky 2003;Baják 2015Baják , 2021)).Béla became engaged to one of the daughters of Manuel I (Komnena Maria, * 1152, +1182).A couple of years later, in the 8th year of the second matrimony of Manuel I, a son was born to the Emperor who later became Emperor Komnenos Alexios II, (* 1169.09.14, ES.II.T.175).Béla, who was then already 19-21 years old recognized the delicate "dimensions" of the situation (perhaps following the advice of his adoptive father), renounced of all his byzantine ranks, broke off his engagement, and came back to Hungary (Kristó and Makk 1981;Makk 1989;Kristó and Makk 1996).Fate was that his older brother, King István III, died at the age of 25 roughly 2 years later (+1172.ES.II.T.154) without having a son and, consequently, he was followed by Béla III, as King of Hungary and Croatia for a relatively long period of 24 years.Béla's personal talent, as well as his knowledge and experience in state matters from his byzantine years, made this quarter of a century one of the most successful periods of the approximately 1000 years history of the Hungarian/Croatian monarchy in the Carpathian Basin.
The exceptionally successful reign of King Béla III, as well as the fortunate (and rare) circumstance that his grave could be identified by a very high degree of certainty (

Results and Discussion
The principal goal of the present work was to collect available data on the progenitors of Béla III up to the 7th generation (including himself) as shown in Table A1 King Béla III maintained good relations with the Byzantine Empire (Makk 1989) during most of his reign.This tendency was mutual (Kapitánffy 2010).These Hungarian/Byzantine relations could have been the results of wise political considerations, but certainly it also had roots in the warm personal attachment to his adoptive father, Emperor Manuel I.As far as it is known, Béla was an obedient and diligent "student" in the difficult one-person school, which was designed to prepare him for the leadership of one of the most important states in Europe and, moreover, it appeared that he had an attractive personality.The good relations between adopted son and father were apparently reciprocal: for example, a few years after Béla left Constantinople, Manuel mediated Béla's marriage (1172) with his second wife's half-sister (Agnes/Anna Ch" atillon-sur-Loing-Antioch, +1184, ES.III/1.T.154) as shown in Chart A2.
The Árpád dynasty always laid emphasis on the equilibrated relations towards both East and West during the entirety of its long reign.These relations were also "materialized" in marriages, as it can be seen in Table A1 and Chart A1 earlier in this paper.These types of East-West connections within Béla III's progenitors were not an exception, as mentioned earlier.Additional examples can be found in the imminent kindred of Béla III.The ascendants of the wife of Béla's elder brother King István III, was Babenberg Agnes (* c. 1151, +1182.01.13,ES.I/1.T.84), the daughter of Babenberg Heinrich II "Jasomirgott", Markgrave, and later (1156) the Duke (Herzog) of Austria (Österreich) and Bavaria (Bayern) and his wife Komnena Theodora/Gertrud (+1183, ES.II.T.175).Moreover, Komnena Theodora was, on her father's side, the granddaughter of Emperor Komnenos Ioannes II and Árpád Piroska/(Saint) Eirene (parents of Manuel I, Chart A1).The younger brother of Kings István III and Béla III, Prince Géza, who-most probably with the intention to avoid heredity conflicts emigrated to Byzantium-married a "Byzantine Princess", while the sisters of these men married in this sense: Ilona became wife of Duke Leopold V of Austria (Babenberg, +1199, ES.I/1.T.84), the brother of Agnes von Babenberg, mentioned above, while Margit married the prominent Byzantine Isakios Makrodukas in her first matrimony.In the next generation, Ilona became mother-in-law of Theodora Angelina, wife of Leopold VI of Austria (Babenberg), daughter of Emperor Alexios III Angelos (+1211) and Euphrosyna Dukaina Kamaterina (ES.II.T.179).Furthermore, it could be mentioned that Theodora Angelina was the sister of Emperor Isakios II Angelos (+1204), the husband of Princess Mária-Margit, daughter of King Béla III, in her first matrimony (ES.II.T.155).
After the death of his first wife in 1184, King Béla III tried again in 1185 a matrimony with the Komnenos family; he made an offer to marry a niece of Manuel I, Theodora Komnene (the widow of Andronikos Lapardas), who was nun in a convent, but this initiative became unsuccessful since Princess Theodora, as a nun, needed permission from the religious authorities of Byzantium and this was not given to her (Stiernon 1966;Moravcsik 1988, p. 256;Makk 1989, p. 119;Baják 2021, p. 63).
These family relations had been built intentionally by the leaders of the interested countries, no doubt aiming to stabilize international relations in Central and Eastern Europe.International marriages between ruling families were an important method of the stabilization of relations between states until fairly recently (ca.XIXth century).In the 3rd millennium this became no more usual, even if now (September 2022) the peaceful stabilisation of international contacts would be highly desirable.
Presently, in the age of modern genetics, genealogy remained one of the important tools of historical research.The greatest advantage of genealogy is that it is (usually) based on written documentation.Unfortunately, travelling back further into the past, primary written documentation of dates, persons, events, and circumstances is getting more sporadic.On the other hand, the relatively new method of archaeogenetics (e.g., Nicholls

Data Acquisition
Genealogical data were obtained primarily from the excellent series Europäische Stammtafeln.Neue Folge (ES) of Detlev Schwennicke.These data have been complemented by additional facts taken from printed and Internet literature.In case of differences, always ES was accepted as the decisive source.Additional sources have been given as footnotes in Table A1.
Moving further back in time, the "original" Asiatic lineages(Nagy et al. 2021) brought by the paternal forefathers, together with those of the Hungarian conquerors, becomes more "diluted" by the politically induced inter-dynastic marriages (obviously: in genealogical tables of ascendence, as Table A1, this effect is observed going "back" in time).Very recently, in the archaeogenetic DNA study of samples obtained from the bones of Árpád (Saint) László I (ES.II.T.154, Kristóf et al. 2017; Varga et al. 2022), the brother of the great-great grandfather of Béla III and, thus, who appears five generations earlier in the family tree of the Árpáds (ES.II.T.153/155, Glatz 2006; Zsoldos 2022; see also Chart A1), the typical "Árpád" (Asiatic) elements in the DNA (Olasz et al.Árpáds and the Anglo-Saxon Wessex-England dynasty (Cornides 1778; Malcolmes 1937; Fest [1940] 2020; Pályi 2022).(γ) Perhaps the most interesting result of the present study is that the Byzantine progenitors were represented already in the 5th generation by a high percentage (40.Yardumian and Schurr 2011).On the other hand, the multi-sided Byzantine kinship of Prince Béla could have been known to Emperor Manuel I and his advisers, when he/they reached the very unusual decision to, as, heir of the imperial throne, invite a member of a foreign dynasty, even if this family was closely related to the ruling Emperor.