Michael Asen

Michael Asen was the eldest son of Tsar Ivan Asen III (John III Asen) and Irene Palaiologina. As a young man he was among the Asen kinsmen around his sister Maria and his brother-in-law Roger de Flor — in 1304–1305 he stayed in the Catalan camp at Gallipoli and accompanied Emperor Michael IX to Adrianople.

Around 1327 Michael was appointed Byzantine governor (together with his cousin, the protovestiarios Andronikos Palaiologos) of the region around Berat and "the rest of Macedonia." In the decisive war between the two emperors Andronikos II and Andronikos III, he took the side of the old emperor and was one of the chief commanders on the Macedonian theatre. At the start of 1328, after Andronikos III entered Thessalonica, Michael seized the fortress of Prosek, but the Serbs soon took it from him by deceit.

Michael Asen left Byzantium and emigrated alone to Serbia. By around 1330 he had settled in the village of Kučevišta near Skopje, where a donor inscription bearing his name survives in the church of St Saviour; he was buried at Hortiatis east of Thessalonica. He was probably the father of Avraam and Yaroslav Palaiologos Asen; it is possible that after his move he remarried and had a daughter Irene, named in an epitaph from Doiran (1362).