Keratsa Maria

Keratsa Maria was a daughter of Tsar Ivan Alexander from his second marriage to Sara-Theodora and a sister of Tsar Ivan Shishman, born no later than the start of summer 1348 — almost the same age as her future husband.

In the summer of 1355 Tsar Ivan Alexander and the Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos concluded a peace treaty, sealed by the marriage of the young Maria and the heir Andronikos IV Palaiologos; the agreement was confirmed by a synodal act of the Patriarchate of Constantinople (17 August 1355). In the spring of 1356 Maria left for the Byzantine capital and from then on shared the stormy fate of her husband. In 1370 she bore the son John (the future emperor John VII).

Andronikos IV repeatedly fought for the throne against his father John V: he raised a revolt in 1373 (for which he was partly blinded and stripped of the succession), then with Genoese help ruled as emperor for nearly three years (1376–1379). In 1377, in her husband's absence, Maria herself governed the empire. After the death of Andronikos IV (1385) she lived in the appanage of Selymbria with her son.

As a nun under the name Makaria, Maria accompanied her son John VII to Italy at the end of 1389 and the very start of 1390, seeking support in Genoa for his imperial ambitions. The journey is attested by a note of the Milanese archbishop Pietro Filargi (the future Pope Alexander V), who calls her "the most exalted lady of the Romans and augusta Maria, renamed Makaria." Through her son John VII she is a grandmother of Byzantine emperors.