The article investigates the portrayal of the Battle of Manzikert (1071) in the Chronographia by Michael Psellos. The main aim of the final part of the Chronographia was to remove the blame for the internal crisis in the eleventh‑century Byzantium from Michael Psellos and his patron, emperor Michael VII Doukas. To reach this aim, Psellos constructed a “rhetoric of veracity” based on repetitions, breaks of internal chronology, omissions, a single Classical allusion and switches from first‑person to third‑person narrator in the key moments of the story. The resultant narrative allowed Psellos to claim a position in the internal Byzantine debate about Manzikert and identify Romanos IV Diogenes as single culprit for the major military defeat.