When in 1182 the regency of the empress mother, Maria of Antioch, an ethnical French notorious for the favouritism shown to Latin merchants and the big aristocratic land-owners, was deposed by Andronikos I Komnenos in the wake of popular support, the new emperor allowed mobs to massacre the hated foreigners. Henceforth Byzantine foreign policy was invariably perceived as sinister and anti-Latin in the West.