In April 1204, the army of the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople. For the leading princes, it was self-evident that they would install an imperator of their own in the Queen of Cities. Their choice fell on Baldwin IX/VI, count of Flanders/Hainault. In this contribution, we aim to analyse how Baldwin and his successors saw their emperorship, and how they and their empire were seen by others in Byzantium and the West. The current historiographical term, ‘Latin Empire of Constantinople’, reflects the prevailing view that an entirely new political construct had been set up replacing the former Byzantine Empire. However, contemporaries, both the emperors themselves as well as outsiders, consistently referred to the empire using both Latin and Greek terms that, prior to 1204, had been commonly employed to refer to the Byzantine Empire. Yet eastern and western conceptions of the nature of the empire before 1204 differed greatly: it was ‘Greek’ in Latin eyes, ‘Roman’ in Byzantine eyes. The Constantinopolitan imperial crown having been placed on his head, Baldwin became heir to these conflicting traditions. Moreover, rival imperial claims soon arose within the Byzantine space in neighbouring Byzantine successor states. In the face of these challenges, the Latin emperors strove to formulate a political ideology legitimising their claim to imperial rule. We will argue that in essence the successive Latin emperors adopted, up to a point, the key tenets of Byzantine imperial theory (Roman character, universalism, emperors as vicars of Christ and autocracy). Their western background and their different relationship with the West led to certain changes, but whether these should be seen as fundamentally un-Byzantine is not self-evident. Conversely, the presence of the now Latin rulers on the Constantinopolitan throne also led to changes in the western perception of the eastern empire.

中文翻译：

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声称巴西利亚吨罗曼

1204年4月，第四次十字军东征军队攻占君士坦丁堡。对于首领们来说，在诸城女王中安插一个自己的元首是不言而喻的。他们的选择落在了佛兰德斯/埃诺伯爵鲍德温 IX/VI 身上。在这篇文章中，我们旨在分析鲍德温和他的继任者如何看待他们的皇帝，以及拜占庭和西方的其他人如何看待他们和他们的帝国。当前的史学术语“君士坦丁堡拉丁帝国”反映了一种盛行的观点，即已经建立了一个全新的政治结构来取代前拜占庭帝国。然而，同时代人，包括皇帝本人和局外人，一直使用拉丁语和希腊语来指称帝国，在 1204 年之前，这些术语通常用于指代拜占庭帝国。然而，东西方对 1204 年之前的帝国性质的概念大相径庭：拉丁语眼中是“希腊”，拜占庭眼中是“罗马”。君士坦丁堡王冠戴在头上，鲍德温成为这些相互冲突的传统的继承人。此外，在邻近的拜占庭继承国的拜占庭空间内很快就出现了敌对的帝国要求。面对这些挑战，拉丁皇帝努力制定一种政治意识形态，使他们对帝国统治的主张合法化。我们将论证，在本质上，历任拉丁皇帝在某种程度上都采用了拜占庭帝国理论的关键原则（罗马性格、普世主义、皇帝作为基督的代表和专制）。他们的西方背景和与西方的不同关系导致了某些变化，但这些是否应该被视为根本上不是拜占庭式的并不是不言而喻的。相反，现在君士坦丁堡王位上的拉丁统治者的存在也导致西方对东方帝国的看法发生了变化。