Zoe Karbonopsina, also Karvounopsina or Carbonopsina, (), was an empress and regent of the Byzantine Empire. She was the fourth spouse of the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI the Wise and the mother of Constantine VII, serving as his regent from 913 until 919.
Early life
Zoe Karbonopsina was born into a Greek family. She was a relative of the chronicler Theophanes the Confessor and a niece-in-law or sister-in-law of the admiral Himerios.
Empress
Zoe was a mistress of Leo VI; they married on 9 January 906, after she had given birth to the future Constantine VII at the end of 905. which had already been reluctant to accept his third marriage to Eudokia Baïana, who died in childbirth in 901.
Although the Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos reluctantly baptized Constantine, he forbade the emperor from marrying for the fourth time. Leo VI married Zoe with the assistance of a cooperative priest, Thomas, but Nicholas' continued opposition to the marriage led to his removal from office and replacement by Euthymios in 907. The new patriarch attempted a compromise by defrocking the offending priest but recognizing the marriage.
Regency
When Leo died in 912, he was succeeded by his younger brother Alexander, who recalled Nicholas Mystikos and expelled Zoe from the palace. Shortly before his death, Alexander provoked a war with Bulgaria. Zoe returned upon Alexander's death in 913, but Nicholas forced her to enter the convent of St. Euphemia in Constantinople after obtaining the promise of the senate and the clergy not to accept her as empress. However, Nicholas' unpopular concessions to the Bulgarians later in the same year weakened his position and in 914 Zoe was able to overthrow Nicholas and replace him as regent. Nicholas was allowed to remain patriarch after reluctantly recognizing her as empress. After that, the empire was ruled in the name of "Constantine and Zoe", but it was temporarily governed solely by Zoe due to Constantine’s minority.
thumb|[[Constantine VII recalls his mother from exile.]]
Zoe governed with the support of imperial bureaucrats and the influential general Leo Phokas the Elder, who was her favorite. Zoe's first order of business was to revoke the concessions to Simeon I of Bulgaria, including the recognition of his imperial title and the arranged marriage between his daughter and Constantine VII. This renewed the war with Bulgaria, which began badly for the Byzantines who were distracted by military operations in Southern Italy and on the eastern frontier. In 915 Zoe's troops defeated an Arab invasion of Armenia, and made peace with the Arabs.