The autumn of 1221 was a season of change in the Anatolian Byzantine state, which was well into the second decade of its existence. The elder Theodore passed away in November. His son-in-law John Vatatzes acceded to the throne in November or December, though possibly as late as early January 1222, amid a brewing dynastic conflict ().1 John Vatatzes stayed in Nicaea at the onset of the winter. The royal couple paid their last respects to the elder Theodore by attending the customary memorial service on the fortieth day after his death at the burial site, the monastery of Hiakynthos. His wife Irene was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. In the last two months of 1221 or early in 1222, their son, the younger Theodore Laskaris, was born in the imperial palace in Nicaea.2 “Nicaea loved by me,” he called it, “where I dropped to the earth from my mother.” His words echo the Book of Wisdom, one of his favorite texts: “I myself, when I was born, drew in the common air and fell upon the kindred earth” (Wisdom 7:3).3