Even now I cannot believe that I am still alive and writing this account of the emperor’s death. I put my hands to my eyes, wondering if what I am relating here is not all a dream – or maybe it is not a dream: perhaps it is a delusion and I am mad, the victim of some extraordinary and monstrous hallucination. How comes it that when he is dead I am still numbered among the living?

Even now I cannot believe that I am still alive and writing this account of the emperor’s death. I put my hands to my eyes, wondering if what I am relating here is not all a dream – or maybe it is not a dream: perhaps it is a delusion and I am mad, the victim of some extraordinary and monstrous hallucination. How comes it that when he is dead I am still numbered among the living?

– Anna Comnena –

The Alexiad

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