Theodora was empress of the Eastern Romans, consort to the Emperor Justinian, and reigned with him in the age when the Basilica Cistern was raised over the waters of the city. Hers is a name that later report has muddled with her most famous captive, but the truth runs the other way about: it was in Justinian's reign, and by his empress's countenance, that the serpent-being The Shahmeran was subdued and sealed beneath the city, the emperor's own magi doing the binding. Theodora was not the bound thing, but amongst those who bound it.
Her name carries weight still in the deep places. The Shahmeran — reckoned extraordinarily powerful and dangerous — remembers the days of Justinian and Theodora as the time of her last and greatest defeat, when she and her spellcasters were met in battle and thrown down; and the workings the empress helped set in place hold the serpent to this day.