Who was Alexios Komnenos, who would fight in the East and West to save Byzantium from the edge of the cliff? Which women loved him? Who was trying to poison him? Why did his daughter, Anna Komnene, hate her brother, the co-emperor John? Why did his wife, Eirene Doukaina, promote Nikephoros Bryennios to the throne? People and events, failures, tears and sorrows, hopes, visions that faded, joys that vanished, pettiness and passions. The novel "A Hat of Purple" aspires to bring to life the last glimmer of Byzantium and to take us back to those difficult years, through the narration of an obscure palace figure, who, retired in Sinope of Pontus, remembers, full of longing, the past.