Simeon I
| Simeon I | ||
|---|---|---|
| Tsar/Czar/Zzar of Bulgaria | ||
| ||
| Simeon I as he always looks whenever he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. | ||
| Reign | 893–27 May 927 | |
| Born | 864/865 | |
| in Bulgaria (duh) | ||
| Died | 27 May 927 | |
| in Bulgaria | ||
| Predecessor | Vladimir | |
| Successor | Peter I | |
| Consort | two, names unknown (either that or Simeon never bothered to learn their names) | |
| Issue | A lot of issues | |
| Father | Boris I | |
| Mother | Maria | |
Simeon I the Great and Grumpy (Bulgarian: Симеон I Велики и Ядосани) was supreme lord and emperor of Bulgaria from 893 to 927, and is considered one of the greatest rulers of all time. He was also one of the most angry and bitter assholes in history, possibly due to the fact that he was constantly under attack by Byzantines, Serbs, Croats, Magyars, and all of these other people that were trying to kill him. With being an asshole aside, his successful campaigns against the Byzantines, Serbs, Croats, and Magyars led Bulgaria to its greatest territorial expansion ever, and was the only time in history where anyone was actually afraid of Bulgaria.
During Simeon's rule, Bulgaria spread over an area between my childhood home near the harbor next to the Aegean Sea, the place where I now work next to the Adriatic Sea, and my vacation home next to the Black Sea. This formed a territorial triangle that would become almost as feared and hated as the Bermuda Triangle. After his death, Bulgaria was no longer as scary.
Biography
Early life
Simeon was born either in 864 or 865[1] as the third son of Boris I of Bread Krum's dynasty. Only a few seconds after emerging from the womb, Simeon urinated on the doctor that was holding him. The doctor turned to Simeon's mother and said "Lady, your son is destined to be an asshole if he behaves like this all the time."
[Citation not needed at all; thank you very much] As Boris was the ruler who Christianized Bulgaria, Simeon was a Christian all his life, even though he was undoubtedly cynical about church and constantly mocked the clerics as a teenager and kept mocking them until his death.
As his father had already designated that the eldest son Vladimir be the heir to the Bulgarian throne, he intended that Simeon take a desk job at the local church, possibly a bureaucrat or a stock-keeper or a person that operates the fax machine, and sent him to the finest university in Constantinople to receive top-grade theological education at age 13.
During the decade he was there, he spent 5% of his time studying, and the rest of the time partying, drinking, slamming some chicks, taking joy rides in his chariot, and pulling outrageous pranks on campus. In the little time he was studying, he learned fluent Greek, to the extent that he was referred to as "the Bulgarian asshole who thinks he's Greek". But seriously, he graduated at the top of his class because he was able to bribe all the professors with his lunch money.
Around 888 or so, Simeon returned to Bulgaria and settled in the part of the Kamchiya where the fish loved to copulate. There, he translated important religious works from the confusing Greek to the even more confusing Old Church Slavonic. Meanwhile, his brother Vladimir succeeded Boris as ruler of Bulgaria, and attempted to reintroduce paganism in the empire, which did not suit well with his father or the people of the empire. This forced Boris to assume the throne again just so he could give Vladimir a good spanking for his actions and send him to a good Christian monastery, and appoint Simeon as the new ruler.[2] All of this was done in public at an assembly in Preslav which also proclaimed Bulgarian as the only language of state and church[3] and moved the Bulgarian capital from Pliska to Preslav.
War with Byzantium and Magyar Buggery
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With Simeon on the throne, the long-lasting peace between the Byzantine and Bulgarian Empires was at an end. A conflict arose when Byzantine Emperor Leo VI the Wise, pressured from the constant bitching from his wife Zoe Karbonopsina, made the ironically stupid decision of moving the marketplace for Bulgarian goods from Constantinople to Thessaloniki, literally. They hired a Gypsy circus to lift up the market and carry it all the way to the new destination.
In Constantinople, Byzantine market-goers paid greatly for Bulgarian goods, and Bulgarian merchants paid only a few pennies a day in taxes. In Thessaloniki, however, prices for Bulgarian products were a penny lower, and taxes on Bulgarian merchants were a penny higher.
This caused considerable outrage among the Bulgarians, and they asked Simeon to fix the problem, who in turn traveled to Constantinople, knocked on Leo's palace door, and demanded an explanation to his decision. However, the Byzantine emperor ignored his embassy, and placed a sign on the front of the palace door that said "Go away you Bulgarian asshole".
Determined to get the people's pennies back, Simeon invaded the Byzantine Empire from the north in autumn of 894, meeting little to no opposition, as the very few soldiers stationed there were either at the pub, taking a dump, or playing video games. Informed of the Bulgarian invasion force, Leo rounded up all the guards in his palace and sent them to Macedonia to halt Simeon's advance, but as soon as the Bulgarian army appeared on the horizon, the Byzantines were scared shitless and ran all the way back to Constantinople. Instead of continuing his advancement, he was forced to turn back to face a Magyar army that was tipping over Bulgarian porto-potties. He also needed to get his wife an anniversary present.
Unable to respond effectively to the Bulgarian invaders due to their constant slap-fight engagements against the Arabs, the Byzantines convinced the Magyars to attack Bulgaria by giving them a block of cheese, a gallon of milk, a box of olives, beans, and cookies,[4] many delicious cookies. They also promised to transport the Magyars across the Danube using the Byzantine navy, as the Magyar army would look quite silly sailing down the river in swan boats, since the Magyar's meager military budget meant that they could only afford to rent the swan boats down at the local fair. Leo VI also told Arnulf of France that Simeon thought he was a fat sack of crap and that he smelled like cow patties to make sure that the Franks did not help Simeon against the Magyars.
In addition, Leo called back commander Nikephoros Phokas from Italy to lead a separate army against Bulgaria with the mere intention of telling the Bulgarians that "your army will never be as big as mine". Simeon, oblivious to the threat from the north, rushed to meet Phokas' forces somewhere along the western coast of the Balkans (I can't really remember where), but the two armies did not engage in a fight due to there being a giant toad in the way, the giant toad in question being 15 centimeters long and weighing 100 grams.
At that moment, the Byzantines offered peace and a lifetime subscription to Hustler, told him of the Byzantine campaign, but forgot to mention the planned Magyar attack. Simeon told the envoy that he was full of shit (besides, Simeon liked Playboy better) and, after sending him to prison, ordered the Byzantine navy's route into the Danube closed off by a giant log that had a wooden sign on the front that said "I'm one step ahead you pricks!" Leo VI was not amused.
Despite the problems they encountered because of the giant log, the Byzantines managed to break the barrier by ramming their ships repeatedly into the obstruction until it snapped in half. After wasting a great deal of time and losing about three-fourths of their fleet doing this, they ferried the Magyar forces led by Arsepad Árpád's son Liüntika across the Danube and assisted them in pillaging, looting, sacking, burning, and vandalizing the nearby Bulgarian lands. Once notified of the surprise invasion, Simeon traveled north to fight the Magyars, leaving a giant sign on the southern border that said "Fuck off, Fuckass Phokas" to prevent a possible attack by Phokas.
Simeon's two encounters with the Magyars resulted in humiliating defeats, forcing him to retreat to Drǎstǎr so that he could take a bath and wash off the stench of failure. After pillaging, looting, sacking, burning, and vandalizing much of Bulgaria and reaching Preslav, the Magyars got bored and returned to their lands to play some Nintendo. Simeon then signed an armistice with the Byzantines so that he could have time to completely wash off the stench of failure.
Anti-Magyar Campaign and More Wars with Byzantium
After spending about a week washing off the stench of failure, Simeon started to plan a massive campaign against the Magyars looking for both retribution and to scare them to the point that they would shit their pants and never invade Bulgaria again. He negotiated an alliance with the Magyars' eastern neighbors, the Pechenegs, by giving them a shiny coin in exchange for their services. (Being a nomadic people, the Pechenegs had never seen currency before.) He also imprisoned the Byzantine envoy Leo Magister in order to delay the release of the captives until he was either bored with torturing them or until he was finished with his campaign against the Magyars. The latter happened first.
Using a Magyar invasion in the lands of his fellow Slavic nations as a cheap excuse for war, Simeon headed against the Magyars with his Pecheneg allies, and handed their asses to them in the Battle of Southern Buh,[5] making them leave Bulgaria forever with their tails between their legs. Following the defeat of the Magyars, Simeon got bored of torturing the Byzantine prisoners, so he released them and let them run on home to Constantinople in exchange for the Bulgarian prisoners being tortured by the Byzantines.
When the Bulgarian prisoners reached Preslav, Simeon decided to do a head count and saw that some of the prisoners weren't released. He tried recounting many times, but he quit out of frustration and concluded that some of the prisoners weren't released.
Believing that the Byzantines did not release all of the prisoners in order to play with his head, he once again invaded Byzantium in the summer of 896, heading directly for Constantinople like a runaway train. He was going to have his army charge at full speed into the Walls of Constantinople, believing that if they hit the wall hard enough and if they did it repeatedly to the point of beating a dead joke, they could break a hole in the wall allowing what was left of the army to waltz into the city uncontested.
This plan was quickly scrapped as a quickly assembled Byzantine army encountered the Bulgarians somewhere in Thrace. With this, Simeon decided to improvise and proceeded to destroy, obliterate, and annihilate the Byzantine forces. This slaughter would later be called the Battle of Bulgarophygon.
The only thing that managed to prevent the Bulgarians from taking Constantinople was by arming Arab captives with pointed sticks and making them wear shirts that said "Bug off Buggers Bulgars". After this incident Leo VI became hysterically loony, and in an attempt to make the Bulgarians never attack his empire again, he signed a peace treaty under which the Byzantines would give Bulgaria an annual tribute which allowed Simeon to afford a constant supply of alcohol and strippers. He also sent a letter to Simeon stating "plz dnt @ak my mπr. kthx."
On many occasions, Simeon violated the peace treaty with Byzantium to both conquer territory from them and just to piss them off. On one such occasion in 904, his Arab friends arrived on the shores of Thessaloniki in the night where they snuck into the city, stole all of the weapons, and replaced said weapons with bananas and plastic chickens. As these items were not of much use in the heat of combat, the city would be easy pickings for the Bulgarians and the nearby Slavic tribes.
In order to persuade Simeon not to capture the city and fill it up with obnoxious Slavic children, Leo VI conceded some of the areas in modern Macedonia to the Bulgarians and promised to wear a shirt that said "I ♥ Slavs" every day until his death. With the treaty of 904, all of the cities in modern southern Macedonia and southern Albania that had at least one Slavic inhabitant were ceded to the Bulgarian Empire, and the new border line lay a bit dangerously close to Thessaloniki, about 20 miles to be exact, and was indicated by a small coffee and deli shop whose menu was written only in Glagolitic. who the hell says stuff like this? What on earth is your problem. We don't need Barack!!!!!!!!!!
Recognition as Emperor/Tsar/Czar/Lord of Pies/etc.
The sudden heart attack and death of Leo VI on 11 May 912 and the accession of his infant son Constantine VII under the guidance of Leo's little brother Alexander, who expelled Leo's wife Zoe from the palace (he had just enough of her bitching), constituted a great opportunity for Simeon to waltz into Constantinople uncontested, as it had always been his dream to enter the palace and jump into the gigantic money pool that the Byzantines hid in the building's basement.
During a bright, sunny day in the spring of 913, Simeon's envoys, who had arrived in Constantinople carrying with them a whoopee cushion to exchange for a renewal of the peace of 896 (don't blame them, it was Simeon's idea), were sent away by Alexander, who refused to pay the annual tribute (which by this time was renamed by Simeon to "the Alcohol and Stripper Super Happy Jolly Fun-time Fund"), thus pissing Simeon off and urging him to prepare for war.
Before Simeon could attack, Alexander had a sudden heart attack and died on 6 June 913, leaving the empire in the trusting hands of a highly incompetent regency council headed by an ex-con man named Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos, Head of Christian and Magical Affairs of State and Master of Tricking You into Giving Him All of Your Money.
Many of the inhabitants of Constantinople did not recognize the young emperor and believed him to be an impostor, so they instead supported the impostor Constantine Doukas, which, exacerbated by the fact that many of the members of the regency council were constantly taking sick days just so they could go down to the local bar to get hammered and receive lap dances, was all to Simeon's advantage.
Constantine and Nicholas tried their best to discourage Simeon in a very long series of pleading letters, even to the point where they offered to suck Simeon's dick, but the Bulgarian ruler nevertheless attacked in full force in either late July or early August 913, around the time of my sister's birthday party, and reached Constantinople without any sort of fight whatsoever, except for killing the occasional rabid badger.
The Bulgarians then besieged the city. They set up giant signs around the city's perimeter that said "surrender or we shall kill all of your children", with archers occasionally firing arrows that said "Merry Christmas!" at the walls to pass the time between potty breaks. There was a bit of anarchy in Constantinople, nothing spectacular (in all honesty, I've seen much better states of anarchy), and it quickly ended after the murder/assassination/mob hit of the impostor Constantine Doukas, and a government had promptly been formed with the currently inebriated Patriarch Nicholas at the helm. This urged Simeon to break off the siege and enter peace negotiations, and there was much rejoicing from the Byzantines.
The finalized negotiations resulted in the Byzantines paying the long overdue tribute with interest, the promise that Constantine VII would marry one of Simeon's daughters (the chubby one who has a unibrow and a wart on the foot growing out of her forehead) and, most importantly of all, Simeon's official recognition as Emperor of the Bulgarians. While they were at it, he was also named "Lord of Pies", "King of Pastry", and "Commander-in-Chief of These Very Silly Titles That You're Probably Tired of Reading by Now".
About a few hours or so after Simeon's visit to Constantinople, Constantine's mother Zoe returned to the palace and immediately proceeded to eliminate the regents by boning them and then killing them in their sleep. Through this plot, she managed to assume power around Valentine's Day in 914. Seeing this, Patriarch Nicholas removed himself from government on the grounds that "he was going to get as far away from that psycho-bitch as possible". After this, Zoe rejected the planned marriage of her son to one of Simeon's daughters, saying that their children would resemble Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
Simeon was definitely not happy about this, and resorted to war to get what he wanted. He charged down south into Thrace in 914 and captured Adrianople without much of a fight (he gave the level and quality of resistance a 2 out of 5). Zoe was quick to send Simeon numerous presents which totaled 50,000 gold pieces in value (about $1.5 million in today's revenue) and even offered to give him a lap dance in order to conciliate him and managed to convince him to cede back Adrianople and withdraw his army. Simeon still got to keep the title of Emperor — although he never got that lap dance — and all was peaceful for a few more years.
Kicking Byzantine Ass at Anchialos
By 917, Simeon was preparing for yet another war against Byzantium, but he had to run a few errands first. First, he needed to get some coffee. After that, he needed to get his wife some tampons. Then he went down to the pet shop to get some Kibbles & Bits for his dogs.
After all of that was finished, he traveled to the lands of his Pecheneg allies to see if they could fight the Byzantines with him, but when he got there, he saw that the Byzantines were already there and had made them a better offer: 100 strippers and a boat made of solid gold. The best Simeon could offer was a clay pot and a piece of string. The Byzantines also tried to persuade Serbia to attack Bulgaria by sending a fake letter with Simeon's forged signature that said "53|285 |2 73|-| 5U><><0|2z!!1"
In 917, a quite strong and fashionable Byzantine army[6] led by Leo Phokas, son of Nikephoros Phokas, and grandson of Whats-his-name Phokas, invaded Bulgaria accompanied by the Byzantine navy under the command of Romanos Lekapenos, which sailed to the Bulgarian Black Sea ports to buy some nachos.
En route to Mesembria or possibly somewhere close to it, Phokas' forces complained that their feet hurt and that they were tired, so they decided to lay down near the river of Achelaos to take a nap. One of the soldiers dreamed that there was a big, huge fudge cake and he was swimming around in it and felt the chocolate everywhere, but he woke up only to realize that he made a yucky doody in his pants. The rest of the army laughed at him, and he was so embarrassed that he ran home to Constantinople with shit running down his legs.
While all of this was happening, Simeon and his army were waiting in the woods, and while the Byzantines were still pointing and laughing at the soldier who soiled himself, the Bulgarians emerged from the woods and slaughtered nearly the entire Byzantine army. Many Byzantine commanders were killed in the battle, but Leo Phokas managed to escape as he was the first to flee the battlefield.[7] This massacre would later become known as the Battle of Anchialos. Decades later, Leo the Deacon would write of the event:
| “ | Along the river Achelaos, you can still see piles of bones of the fleeing Byzantine army arranged into different patterns by the victorious Bulgarians. These grim messages say things such as "turn back", "I'm serious, turn back", "There ain't no turning back now, buddy", "All Byzantines will be shot beyond this point", "Eat at Joevski's", and "The Patriots have won the Superbowl! Hip-hip-hooray! I like to eat beans with cabbage!", along with some I simply don't understand, the strangest of these messages being "go eat shit fuckers". | ” |
The planned Pecheneg attack from the north also failed horribly. They were going to use the solid gold boat that the Byzantines gave them to transport across the Danube with 10,000 men on board, and they also brought the 100 Byzantine strippers with them. When they placed the boat onto the water, it sank like a rock, and everyone on board died, including the strippers.[8]
The Byzantines received no sort of help from the Serbs or the Magyars at all. The Magyars didn't attack because they were afraid that they would get their asses kicked in the same way as it happened at the Battle of Southern Buh.[9] The Serbs under Petar Gojniković didn't attack because his brother was one of Simeon's best friends, his son wanted to be like him, and his rebellious teenage daughter just wanted him.
Simeon's army quickly followed up the victory of Anchialos with another victory at the village of Katasyrtai called the Battle of Karasyrtai, although this battle was not as memorable as the Battle of Anchialos, possibly due to the fact that Katasyrtai did not roll off the tongue as well as Anchialos. The Bulgarians pursued the Byzantines that fled from Anchialos because one of the Bulgarians caught the scent of beef coming from the bag of one of the Byzantine soldiers. They chased the Byzantines all the way to the village of Katasyrtai and slaughtered them. The Bulgarian army then ate the beef and contracted salmonella afterwards.
Suppression of Serbian Unrest and Yet Even More Wars Against Byzantium
Immediately after that campaign, Simeon did the laundry, washed the dishes, cleaned the litter box, balanced his checkbook, and declared war against Serbia in order to punish Petar Gojniković for siding with the Byzantines. Simeon sent an army led by two of his commanders, Theodore Sigrica and Marmais, to Serbia. The two managed to persuade Petar to attend a personal meeting, where he was blindfolded, slapped repeatedly with a herring, kicked in the crotch, enchained, and carried off to Bulgaria where he was imprisoned and repeatedly poked with a stick until he died from poking-induced trauma. Simeon put Pavle Branović on the Serbian throne, thus restoring the Bulgarian influence in Serbia for a while until the Serbians eventually realized sometime later that they were being duped.
Meanwhile, the Byzantine's numerous disastrous, but mildly humorous, military failures forced another change of government in Constantinople, as the people were sick and tired of losing all the time. The admiral Romanos Lekapenos, who had just returned with a bag of chips he purchased from a store along the Black Sea, replaced Zoe as regent of the young Constantine VII in 919, forcing her back into a loony bin where she spent the rest of her days.
Romanos betrothed his nerdy daughter Helena to Constantine and advanced to the rank of co-emperor (although he would prefer that you call him vice-emperor) in December 920, effectively assuming the government of the empire, which was largely what Simeon had planned to do but never did because he was too busy watching Monty Python while eating bon-bons.
After he was finished watching the Spam sketch, he received a letter stating that he could no longer claim the Byzantine throne through diplomatic means. He was infuriated after hearing this, and he once again had to wage war in order to get what he wanted. Between 920 and 922, Bulgaria increased its pressure on Byzantium, both literally and metaphorically, campaigning in the west through Thessaly and in the east in Thrace, reaching the Olive Garden at the Dardanelles and the Hooters on the Isthmus of Corinth.
After having a couple brews and a few attempts at fondling the bums of the hot waitresses there, Simeon's forces appeared before Constantinople's drive-thru in 921. There, Simeon ordered a quarter-pounder with cheese, a large order of French fries, a large Pepsi, and the deposition of Romanos. They got everything except the last item. Seeing this, they complained to the manager, who then said that the army should complain to the management office in Adrianople. When they got there, they saw that it was closed, as if the people working at the management office were anticipating the arrival of Simeon's army. In response, the Bulgarians captured Adrianople, burned much of the Golden Horn, and seized Bizye.
Desperate to conquer Constantinople and feeling in the mood for some Middle Eastern cuisine, Simeon planned a large campaign in 924 and sent envoys to the Fatimid caliph Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi Billah (or as Simeon called him "Something Something al-Something Something Rama Lama Ding-Dong"), who possessed a powerful navy and a truck full of pita sandwiches that Simeon needed.
The caliph agreed and sent his own representatives back with the Bulgarians to arrange the alliance along with a coupon for a free pita from Spangles. However, the envoys were captured by the Byzantines at Calabria and repeatedly spanked them so that they would learn to never help the Bulgarians. They also took the Spangles coupon and Simeon was left hungry.
In Serbia, the Byzantines persuaded the lord Zaharije to revolt against Simeon by jingling a ring of keys in front of his face. Zaharije then got many Bulgarians, who were by now exhausted from Simeon's endless campaigns against Byzantium, to support him by jingling a ring of keys in front of them. The Bulgarian emperor sent his troops under Sigrica and Marmais to dispose of Zaharije, but they were stopped dead in their tracks when Zaharije jingled a ring of keys in front of them. The two were so distracted by the pretty keys that they did not noticed the big axe-wielding guy that came up from behind and decapitated the both of them.
Simeon had no choice but to sign an armistice with Byzantium so he could better concentrate on suppressing the uprising. He did this by passing a new law which stated that any Serb who possessed a ring of keys would be punished with death. Seeing that his ring of keys was now a death sentence, Zaharije was forced to flee to neighboring Croatia. The suppression was successful, Serbia was placed under direct Bulgarian control, and Simeon confiscated all of the key rings which he then had smelted down and made into an iron statue of himself.
In the summer of 924, Simeon arrived in Constantinople, knocked on the palace door, and demanded to see the Patriarch and the Emperor. The door attendant said that he needed to speak to the large, square-shaped hole in the wall in order to see the two. Simeon walked over to the hole in the wall and demanded to see the Patriarch and the Emperor. The hole then spit out a number of papers that Simeon needed to sign in order to see the Patriarch and the Emperor. Simeon shoved the signed papers (all 42 of them) back into the hole, and after a long bureaucratic process (which, for the sake of sanity, shall not be described in this article), the palace door opened to reveal Emperor Romanos, complete with smoke machines and fireworks.[10] The two traveled to the Golden Horn and arranged a truce, which proclaimed that Byzantium would pay Bulgaria an annual tax (which would later be renamed to "the Alcohol and Stripper Super Happy Jolly Fun-time Fund") and Bulgaria would cede back some of the snack parlors along the Black Sea coast.
War with Croatia and Death
Somewhere around 925, Patriarch Nicholas had a sudden heart attack and died. Seeing an opportunity to increase Bulgaria's power, make a little bit of money, and spite the Byzantines, Simeon raised the status of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to a patriarchate. This may be linked to Simeon's diplomatic relations with the Papacy between 924 and 926, during which he demanded and received Pope John X's recognition of his title as "Supreme Emperor of the Romans and He That Shall One Day Kill You All, Or Possibly Own You".
In 926, Simeon invaded Croatia. Not expecting an attack from them, the Croats climbed up the nearest hill they could find. On top of said hill they found a tree. The Croat army climbed up the tree and started throwing anything they could find up there, including pine cones, apples, bananas, goats, trash cans, a carriage, and Little Jimmy from down the street. The Bulgarians could not withstand the massive barrage of nonsensical debris, and with that, they retreated. Fearing that they might come back, Croat King Tomislav abandoned his union with Byzantium and sent a letter to Simeon that said "Mogao te ne napasti nas? Mi ćemo popuštanje te pie!"
During the last few months of his life, Simeon planned a massive, gigantic siege against Constantinople. Critics proclaimed that it was going to be the biggest siege in history and far bigger than any siege that preceded it. Thousands of people pre-ordered seats to the event so that they could watch the siege live, and even more made posters to hype the siege to an even greater extent. Unfortunately, like the 3DO game Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the siege was never to be finished.
On 27 May 927, Simeon had a sudden heart attack and died in his palace in Preslav with nearly 300 witnesses. A man cried "Simeon has been assassinated!" and pointed to a random person in the crowd saying that he was the killer. That man was killed by palace guards 5 seconds later. After seeing that the man accused was not the assassin and that Simeon was not assassinated, people tried to tie his death with legend, as science was not advanced enough to explain what really happened to Simeon. According to the legend, Romanos climbed on top of the iron statue of Simeon carrying a saw and started to decapitate it. It took him nearly 5 hours to behead the statue, but after that was completed, Simeon died 5 seconds later. Simeon was succeeded by his son Peter, and Bulgaria was no longer considered scary nor all that important after that moment.
References
- ↑ Historians can never make up their minds about this.
- ↑ Boris remarks, "He maybe an asshole, but he'd sure make a much better leader than his idiot brother Vladimir."
- ↑ They couldn't be assed to learn any other languages.
- ↑ COOKIES!!!
- ↑ Buuuuuuuuuuuh...
- ↑ Oh yes, I'd love a piece of that beefcake.
- ↑ That yellow bastard.
- ↑ Those poor strippers. They didn't stand a chance.
- ↑ Buuuuuuuuuuuh...
- ↑ Simeon thought that it was all too excessive for someone who was nowhere near as great as Constantine.
See also
