 The mother of 11th-century Bulgarian tsar Samuil was the daughter of the Armenian king, Ashot II.Maria, the wife of 10th-century Tsar Peter I, was the granddaughter of Byzantine emperor of Armenian origin, Romanos I Lekapenos.Another Byzantine emperor—Basil I, the founder of the Macedonian dynasty and an Armenian from Thrace—spent his early years as a captive in the First Bulgarian Empire in the 9th century.