Later generations of Venetians proudly boasted that Enrico Dandolo had, with God's help, made the Greeks pay the penalty for the wicked crime committed against them, and against him personally, by the Emperor Manuel. At the time too the people of Venice were no doubt proud of what had been achieved in their name. But they may also have been apprehensive. The situation was without precedent in their political history. Their Doge showed no sign of coming home, though he sent back a large part of his fleet. His son Reniero continued to act as his regent in Venice while Dandolo plunged wholeheartedly into his new role as leader, defender and promoter of the Venetian cause in Byzantium. Constitutional reforms and developments in Venice in the twelfth century had tended further to control and curb the autocratic authority of the Doge. The consilium sapientium instituted in 1143 had been replaced by two advisory bodies, the Maggior Consiglio of thirty-five members and the Minor Consiglio of three with six councillors. Venice had become a Commune whose Doge's powers were hedged about with restrictions from the moment when he took his oath of office and pronounced his pledge or promissio to the people who had elected him. Enrico Dandolo behaved like a Doge of an earlier age.

The Venetians in ‘Romania’, however, were glad to have him in their midst. At last they had their own temporal and spiritual leaders of their colony. The Latin Empire envisaged in the treaty of March 1204 and established by the conquest of Constantinople was in theory a condominium between Venetians and crusaders.