Theodora Megale Komnene was born around 1240 and died 1303. She was Empress of Trebizond from 1284 to 1285. Theodora was a woman of distinguished ancestry and was related by blood or marriage to many of the ruling families of Byzantium. She was the daughter of Emperor Manuel I of Trebizond by his second wife Rusudan, a Georgian princess. Theodora married John III Palαiologos a Byzantine Emperor and together they had 7 children.
She seized the crown in 1284 from her half brother Emperor John II who later defeated her to recapture the throne just 1 year later. She reined long enough to have minted her own coins. Following the death of her husband in 1282, Theodora placed increasing emphasis on religion and became a patron of monasteries, charitable institutions but also the arts. Either before or after her reign, she was a nun.