Career
Andronikos is a very obscure figure. All Byzantine chroniclers on the other hand, beginning with George Akropolites who is the main source on his life, call him Andronikos, and it is usually supposed that the different name in Mesarites" account is a transcription error by a later copyist. Andronikos is first mentioned by Akropolites as participating in the 1211 campaign against the Latin Empire, which ended with the Nicaean defeat at the Battle of the Rhyndacus.
During the course of the campaign, the Latin Emperor Henry of Flanders also took the cities of Lentiana and Poimanenon.
Andronikos was evidently one of the main commanders during the siege of Lentiana, and was captured but later released by the Latins. Due to the chronological order of Akropolites" narrative, the marriage of Andronikos with Irene Laskarina, the eldest daughter of the Nicaean emperor Theodore I, was earlier regarded as contemporary with the 1211 events, but is now placed in February 1216.
He died soon after, however, from an unidentified "sexual condition" according to Akropolites, and Irene was remarried to John Doukas Vatatzes, who eventually succeeded Theodore I as emperor.
