War in Symbols About the Fate of the Samuel State

In the course of the war that led to the fall of Samuel’s state, we find symbolic actions intended to send a message, such as the burning of Gabriel Radomir’s palaces in Buteli and the blinding of Samuel’s captured soldiers. This pattern continued after the fall, with the construction of the castle named after the conqueror, Basil, between the two capitals of the defeated empire. The first rebellion aimed at re-establishing Samuel’s state also employed such symbolic actions—one of them was the destruction, without any practical reason, of the castle of Basilida. The paper traces this pattern further in the rebellion of Konstantin Bodin and the Norman invasion of the 1080s, when some of the Norman actions can be interpreted in the same way, as an attempt to win the loyalty of the supporters of the defeated empire.