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.
Irene Komnene Kantakouzene Palaiologina Asenina
- Spouse
Irene Komnene Kantakouzene Palaiologina Asenina was a daughter of the grand constable John Palaiologos Komnenos and a granddaughter of the sevastokrator Constantine Palaiologos — brother of Emperor Michael VIII.
Through her marriage to Michael Komnenos Asen she joined two branches of the wide Byzantine kinship of the Palaiologoi and the Asens. Her many family names reflect the interweaving of the most noble Byzantine houses, among which the Asen family took a lasting place in the fourteenth century.
- “Ирина е дъщеря на великия конетабъл Йоан Палеолог Комнин … внучка на Константин Палеолог (брат на император Михаил VIII Палеолог).”— Genealogy and Prosopography of the Asen Dynasty 1186–1460, p. 316