After he had been forced to retire, Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos (1347– 1354) wrote a history in which he tried to explain his actions throughout his career. It is an account of political and military affairs, primarily covering the years 1320– 1356 in four books. At over 1,700 pages in the Bonn edition for a span of thirty- six years, it is a highly detailed history. The History is the only surviving history written by an emperor concerning his own reign.

The first book concerns the civil war between Andronikos II and Andronikos III (ca. 1321– 1328). It focuses on the friendship between Kantakouzenos and Andronikos III. The second deals with the reign of Andronikos III until 1341. Book 3, the most extensive section of the work, covers events of the 1341– 1347 civil war that brought Kantakouzenos to power. The subject of book 4 is the reign of Kantakouzenos himself and subsequent events up to 1356. The history also contains limited information up to the year 1363. The overarching story is of Kantakouzenos's heroic struggles, his rise to power, and his fall.

Throughout the text Kantakouzenos describes his actions in the third person. The text opens with an apparently fictive letter from Neilos asking Christodoulos for a history of the emperors. Christodoulos's reply is the history. After a first paragraph addressed to Neilos, he is not mentioned again until the final lines of the text. This fictional frame allows Kantakouzenos to freely talk about himself and present the history so that he looks good. The manuscript tradition attributes the text to Kantakouzenos, and given the way it narrates events from his perspective, his authorship seems secure.

The History constitutes Kantakouzenos's attempt to justify the decisions he made during his time in power. He uses a number of rhetorical strategies to convince the audience that he is a trustworthy narrator and a man of good character. For example, a deliberately limited vocabulary works to make him appear guileless; emphasis on his failures makes the text seem like an anti- panegyric, etc. Kantakouzenos constructs himself as a tragic hero who fought implacably against evil.