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Maria of Alania Byzantine empress by marriages to emperors Michael VII Doukas and Nikephoros III Botaneiates (aka Maria-Martha of Georgia of Bagrationi royal dynasy)
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Maria of Alania (born Martha, Georgian, 1053-1118) was Byzantine empress by marriages to emperors Michael VII Doukas and Nikephoros III Botaneiates. At the time of her marriage, Georgian Maria was one of only two non-Byzantine princesses to marry a Byzantine heir and the only one to give birth to an heir.
Anna Komnene, in her medieval biographical text Alexiad, describes the beautiful Georgian princess Maria of Alania: "...after Michael Ducas' deposition, when he had advised the latter's successor, Nicephorus Botaniates, to take her in marriage, because she came from another country and had not a crowd of kinsfolk to give the Emperor trouble, and he had told Botaniates a great deal about her family and personal beauty, and often praised her to him. And certainly she was as slender of stature as a cypress, her skin was white as snow, and though her face was not a perfect round, yet her complexion was exactly like a spring flower or a rose. And what mortal could describe the radiance of her eyes? Her eyebrows were well-marked and red-gold, while her eyes were blue. Full many a painter's hand has successfully imitated the colors of the various flowers the seasons bring, but this queen's beauty, the radiance of her grace and the charm and sweetness of her manners surpassed all description and all art. Never did Apelles or Pheidias or any of the sculptors produce a statue so beautiful. The Gorgon's head was said to turn those who looked upon it into stone, but anyone who saw the Queen walking or met her unexpectedly, would have gaped and remained rooted to the spot, speechless, as if apparently robbed of his mind and wits. There was such harmony of limbs and features, such perfect relation of the whole to the parts and of the parts to the whole, as was never before seen in a mortal body, she was a living statue, a joy to all true lovers of the beautiful. In a word, she was an incarnation of Love come down to this terrestrial globe."
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_of_Alania
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