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.
Kera Tamara
- Parents
- Siblings
Kera Tamara was a daughter of Tsar Ivan Alexander from his first marriage to Theodora Basarab, born no later than around 1340 (the address "kera," deriving from the Greek kyra, was reserved in Bulgaria only for women of the royal family).
Before 1355/56 Tamara was married to Despot Constantine — probably a prominent Tarnovo boyar who received the highest court dignity after becoming the tsar's son-in-law. Her portrait beside him survives in the London Tetraevangelion.
Around 1371, after the death of her father and the accession of her brother Ivan Shishman, the widowed Tamara was given in marriage to the Ottoman sultan Murad I — a pledge of peace between Bulgaria and the Turks. Her sacrifice did not change the course of Bulgarian-Turkish relations, but her conduct was remembered: according to the Synodikon she "preserved her Orthodox faith, set her people free, lived piously and died in peace."
- “Тя е дъщеря на Иван Александър от брака му с Теодора I … преди 1355/56 г. Тамара е била омъжена за деспот Константин.”— Genealogy and Prosopography of the Asen Dynasty 1186–1460, p. 214