Romanos concludes a treaty with Prince Igor of Kiev in 944.

This crisis having passed, Kourkouas is free to return to the eastern frontier.

It has sometimes been suggested that a marriage alliance might bring together the Eastern and Western parts of the empire and so provide for a united defense against the common enemy in Sicily—the Arabs.

In 944, Constantine's five-year-old son is married to a daughter of Hugh of Provence, the Carolingian claimant to Italy.

Constantine also keeps up diplomatic contact with Otto I, the Saxon king of Germany.

Romanos' later reign has been marked by the old emperor's heightened interest in divine judgment and his increasing sense of guilt for his role in the usurpation of the throne from Constantine VII.

On the death of Christopher, by far his most competent son, in 931, Romanos had not advanced his younger sons in precedence over Constantine VII.

Fearing that Romanos will allow Constantine VII to succeed him instead of them, his younger sons Stephen and Constantine, impatient to succeed to power, arrest their father in December 944, carry him off to the Prince's Islands and compel him to become a monk.