Attributed coat of arms of the House of Palaiologos

Alexander © September ANNO DOMINI 2011

       During the late European Mediæval period, the reigning family of the Roman Empire in Constantinople was attributed by Western European scribes a coat of arms which comprised the two-headed eagle emblem of the emperors with the Empire's naval ensign, the naval ensign assumed to have been the imperial family's coat of arms.
       The heraldic achievement of the Palaiologi is attested, then, to be either Gules a cross between four flints Or or Gules, a cross between four β Or in manuscripts; a crest was even devised being Issuant from a crown of three leaves and two pearls a tub of the arms filled with peacock feathers. The arms are markedly similar to those of the Palaiologi's predecessors, namly Philip of Courtenay, whose escutcheon is Gules a cross between four crosses encircled between four crosslets Or, and those attributed to the House of Lakarsis, whose escutcheon is Gules a cross between four crosses pattée encircled.
       As for the eagle as am imperial emblem, a black eagle in profile on a golden field all within a red annulet had been used as a symbol of the Roman Emperors in Constantinople since as early as A.D. 578, during the co-regency of Tiberius II Constantine. A golden two-headed eagle on a red field latter appeared as a symbol of the emperors during the reign of Theodore II Lascaris, which began in A.D. 1254, which may have actually been usurped from the Seljuqs of Rum as it was earlier the emblem of Kaikhosrau II of Ikonion, until the Seljuq sultan had to abandon the emblem in A.D. 1243 as a result of military losses to the invading Mongols.
       Michael VIII, the first emperor of the House of Palaiologos, adopted a golden single-headed eagle with halo on a red field as his imperial symbol when he took the throne in A.D. 1261. Michael  VIII appointed his son Andronicus II as co-emperor, whose emblem was a red single-headed eagle on a golden field. After the death of Michael VIII, Andronicus II reverted the imperial emblem to a golden-two headed eagle on a red field once again, and also used a crowned golden two-headed eagle on a red field between three ciphers as his personal banner.