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.
John Asen
- Parents
- Siblings
John Asen was probably the first-born son of Andronikos Asen and a brother of Empress Irene Kantakouzene and of Despot Manuel Asen. Like them he tied his fortunes to the house of Kantakouzenos.
At the start of the civil war John and his brother Manuel spent six years imprisoned in the fortress of Vira, until in the autumn of 1341 their sister Irene set them free. John accompanied his brother-in-law John VI Kantakouzenos on the march to Thessalonica (1342), and after Kantakouzenos's second coronation (1347) he was granted, together with his brother, the dignity of sevastokrator. He later bore the title of despot as well, and is mentioned until the late 1350s among the prominent participants in the palace struggles of Byzantium.
- “Син на Андроник Асен (II, № 6), вероятно първороден … брат на Мануил [Асен].”— Genealogy and Prosopography of the Asen Dynasty 1186–1460, p. 295