In the year 987, the Roman emperor Basileios II Porphyrogennetos was surrounded on all sides in his palace in Constantinople – New Rome (Nova Roma). His bookish progenitors had allowed caudillos and generalissimos (in Greek, κηδϵμόνϵς) to rule in their stead for the past several generations, and his misguided attempt in 986 to prove his mettle against the Bulgars at the Battle of Trajan’s Gate resulted in the disgruntlement of the military officers who had once fought for his predecessors’ generalissimos. Now two of them (Bardas Skleros and Bardas Phokas) were steadily bearing down on Constantinople from the Anatolian heartland, bolstered by thousands of Armenian crack troops unhappy with imperial Chalcedonian Christianity. All of Anatolia seemed to have deserted Basileios, and with it, imperial provinces in Crimea most likely seeking greater autonomy. Court historians like Leon Diakonos looked back to the times of the generalissimos with nostalgia while poets like Ioannes Geometres lamented the sullying of imperial authority and berated the Romans as ‘Thracians’. Cornered, Basileios sent a desperate delegation to some Viking named Vladimir faraway in Kiev asking for military support in exchange for the hand of his sister – the princess Anna Porphyrogennete – a prize so valuable that not even the western emperor, Otto III, was allowed her. The price? Accept Christianity immediately and conquer Cherson (Sevastopol’) – most probably on Basileios’ behalf.

No one knows exactly how many inhabitants of Kiev were baptised in the Dniepr that day; sources differ on the exact story.