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.
Vitleem
- Parents
Vitleem (Bethlehem) is a figure with a name unusual for a Bulgarian, mentioned in two letters of November 1204 exchanged with Pope Innocent III. In the letter of Tsar Kaloyan himself it is reported that two boys — Basil and Bethlehem — had set out for Rome to learn Latin well, their knowledge then to serve the Bulgarian royal chancery.
The more important clarification was made by Archbishop Basil, who told the pope something Kaloyan had passed over in silence: one child (Basil) was the son of the priest Constantine, while the other — Bethlehem — was the son of the king ("alius vero regis"). The sources thus suggest that Vitleem was an illegitimate son of Kaloyan.
Apart from this brief episode from the time of the union with the Roman Church, the sources report nothing further about Vitleem's later fate.
- “Да допуснем, че Витлеем е извънбрачно дете на българския цар [Калоян].”— Genealogy and Prosopography of the Asen Dynasty 1186–1460, p. 94