The Second Bulgarian Empire

Mitso Asen emerges abruptly from the obscurity of the mid-thirteenth-century Bulgarian aristocracy. His parentage, birth date, place of origin and any siblings are unknown. Byzantine authors render his name as Μύτζης, while George Pachymeres once uses the variant Μυλτζής. Linguistically, Mitso is a diminutive of Mito, itself a shortened form of Dimitar, but this etymology does not establish that Dimitar was his formal name; proposed readings such as Micho or Milcho lack foundation. Pachymeres identifies him as a Bulgarian, yet nothing in the surviving evidence permits a fuller reconstruction of his ancestry.

Mitso entered the Asen dynastic circle through marriage rather than demonstrable descent. His wife, Maria Asenina, was a daughter of Tsar Ivan II Asen, whose reign from 1218 to 1241 remained the principal source of dynastic legitimacy in Bulgaria. Pachymeres accordingly calls Mitso the son-in-law of Ivan II Asen and the co-brother-in-law of the Nicaean emperor Theodore II Laskaris. Another son-in-law of Ivan II, the sebastokrator Peter, stood in an analogous familial position, but the sources do not record Peter contesting Mitso’s claim. Mitso and Maria had at least two children known from the excerpts: their firstborn son Ivan, later Tsar Ivan III Asen, and their daughter Maria, later associated by marriage with George Terter.