Doukas heiress married at about twelve to Alexios I Komnenos, whose family backing helped him to the throne in 1081; mother of Anna Komnene and John II Komnenos, she grew powerful late in the reign and failed to put Anna's husband on the throne in 1118.
Irene Doukaina was empress of the Byzantine Empire from 1081 to 1118 as the wife of Alexios I Komnenos. A great-niece of Constantine X Doukas, she married Alexios in 1078, and the backing of her family was essential when he seized Constantinople in 1081. His mother, Anna Dalassene, an old enemy of the Doukas family, wanted her replaced, and she was crowned a week after her husband only because her relatives insisted.
For twenty years Anna Dalassene ran the palace while the young empress stayed in her shadow. After her mother-in-law retired, she became Alexios's constant companion, travelling with him on campaign and taking over the civil administration when he was ill. Her daughter Anna Komnene idolised her in the Alexiad; the historian Niketas Choniates remembered her instead as the mother who tried to disinherit her own son, John II Komnenos, in favour of Anna and her husband Nikephoros Bryennios.
Irene Doukaina was born around 1066. Her father, Andronikos Doukas, was the elder son of the Caesar John Doukas, brother of Constantine X Doukas, and her mother, Maria, was a granddaughter of the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Vladislav. Her grandfather the Caesar was the most powerful figure at court in the 1070s. In 1078, when she was about twelve, she married the young general Alexios Komnenos, a match that tied the ambitious Komnenos brothers to the Doukas family in the year Michael VII Doukas lost his throne to Nikephoros III Botaneiates.
Anna Komnene's Alexiad gives her mother one of the most elaborate portraits in Byzantine literature: upright as a young sapling and perfectly proportioned, with light-blue eyes whose gaze both charmed and frightened, so beautiful that she might be called Athena made visible. Anna also describes a reserved woman who disliked appearing in public, read the lives of the saints, gave generously to monks and beggars, and nursed Alexios through his gout. This is a daughter's tribute, written in the convent where Anna shared her mother's disgrace, and it passes over anything that might embarrass either of them, including the rumours that Alexios had an affair with Maria of Alania early in the reign.
Other evidence shows a more determined figure. Anna says Alexios took the empress on campaign partly so that she could watch for plots against him, and some modern historians read this as a sign that he did not trust her alone in the capital. Niketas Choniates, writing two generations later, describes her nagging Alexios to name Bryennios as heir and mocking John as rash, pleasure-loving and weak, while the emperor pretended to be busy or lost his temper. Choniates liked to dramatise palace quarrels, but her attempt to pass over John in 1118 is not in doubt. Her reputation as a plotter lasted: the modern poet Constantine Cavafy called her a viper.
In the spring of 1081 Alexios and his brother Isaac rebelled against Nikephoros III Botaneiates, and the Doukas family, led by the Caesar John, gave them decisive support. Alexios entered Constantinople on 1 April and was crowned within days, but his wife was left out of the ceremony. Anna Dalassene is said to have wanted her son to divorce his young wife and marry Maria of Alania, the former wife of both Michael VII and Nikephoros III, who was still living in the palace. The Doukas family persuaded the patriarch Kosmas to crown her about a week later. Anna Dalassene accepted the coronation but forced Kosmas to resign and replaced him with her own candidate, Eustratios Garidas.
Her first child, Anna Komnene, was born on 1 December 1083, and her eldest son, John, on 13 September 1087. She bore nine children in all.
For most of the reign the empress had little power. In 1081 Alexios gave his mother formal authority over the civil administration, and Anna Dalassene dominated the palace until she retired to a convent around 1100. Her position rose after that. She went with Alexios on campaign, including the war against Bohemond I of Antioch in 1107–1108 and the expedition to the Chersonese in 1112, and when she stayed in Constantinople she governed with Nikephoros Bryennios as her counsellor. Around 1112, when rheumatism left Alexios barely able to move, he handed her the civil government and control of access to him.
She used her wealth for religious foundations and learning. The convent of the Theotokos Kecharitomene, which she founded in Constantinople in the early twelfth century, has a surviving foundation charter, or typikon, which sets out its rules and makes provision for her daughters to live there. Anna Komnene says that it was at the empress's request that Nikephoros Bryennios began his history of Alexios's rise, and the empress also corresponded with Theophylact of Ohrid and supported Michael Italikos.
Irene Doukaina wanted the throne to go to Anna and Bryennios rather than to John, who had been crowned co-emperor as a child in 1092. Alexios refused. As he lay dying in August 1118 she nursed him while still pressing her son-in-law's claim, and when John took his father's signet ring and hurried to secure the Great Palace, she accused him of theft and treachery. Alexios died on 15 August 1118. She mourned him deeply, but soon joined Anna in a conspiracy against John. Bryennios would not act, the plot failed, and mother and daughter withdrew to the Kecharitomene. It was a comfortable retirement: there she distributed food to the poor and paid for the upbringing and education of orphan girls.