Family Tree of the Second Bulgarian Empire
23 reigning rulers across four dynasties — with their consorts, kin and the family's Byzantine branch
The Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396) was ruled by four successive dynasties — the Asen, Terter, Smilets and Shishman houses — from the uprising of the brothers Peter and Asen against Byzantium to the fall of Tarnovo to the Ottomans. This family tree charts every tsar and their relatives across those two centuries, together with the Asens in Byzantium: the descendants of Ivan Asen III, who lived on in Constantinople as the noble Asanes family. Switch between the houses with the tabs, expand a branch to follow a line, and select any name for their reign, family ties and the primary sources behind each fact.
Alexander Komnin Asen
- Parents
Alexander Komnenos Asen was a son of Despot John Komnenos Asen from his first marriage, and a nephew of Tsar Ivan Alexander. He belonged to the Epirote-Thessalian branch of the family, settled in the Greek lands around Ioannina.
The sources mention him sparingly, chiefly in connection with his father's domains in Epiros and Thessaly in the second half of the fourteenth century — a period in which the descendants of the Shishman house in the Greek lands manoeuvred between Serbia, Byzantium and the advancing Ottomans.
- “Син на деспот Йоан Комнин Асен … от първия му брак.”— Genealogy and Prosopography of the Asen Dynasty 1186–1460, p. 236