Indeed, there is no requirement that the two occurred at exactly the same time, and the fact that it is said that they do is likely a fabrication. if we do take it at face value though, the statement that the obscuration event occurred after the blinding of the emperor could be many months or years after, but of course people of that time linked the two together. But the point is that there is a "historical record" of a visible obscuration of the sun at around that time, which could be volcanic in nature. Up to now, there has been no volcano linked to that "historical" event, but as we have argued, if then ice cores are mis-dated around this time, then perhaps we do have a volcanic source for this event after all. Therefore, some reportedly historical events that have been dismissed, or ignored may need to be re-examined within the context of the new chronology.

Regarding Theophanes, I hadnt really heard of him either. I had come across the obscuration event elsewhere (on some fruit loopery website probably!), and in my searches for a sober and citable original source found and it in Mango. I dont think that it is really important whether he was the originator of the historical record, or merely copying other medieval authors work, merely that he was relatively contemporaneous to the obscuration event that he records.

Was this a volcanic event though? It looks like it, but we just dont know until the ice core workers sort out the chronology themselves. We can suspect that it is a volcanic eruption since we do have prior records of a volcanic dust veil viewed in Constantinople in AD 626 recorded by Michael the Syrian (Chronicle 11.409, Chabot):

Quote

In the year A.D. 626 the light of half the sphere of the sun
disappeared, and there was darkness from October to June. As
a result people said that the sphere of the sun would never be
restored to its original state.

It is estimated that this dust veil was about 9 months long (hence why we see a frost ring at AD 627, and for which the ice cores date as around Ad 619). The AD 797 event to a Mediterranean eruption because the event doesn't seem to be climatically effective (as evidenced in trees) having a small 17 day duration. This to us suggests that it was small in scale and thus to be recorded in Constantinople, be geographically local (i.e. Mediterranean), with perhaps Constantinople being downwind from it.

Jonny

The path to good scholarship is paved with imagined patterns. - David M Raup