Shishman

Shishman was a son of Tsar Michael III Shishman Asen from his first marriage to Anna-Neda, and the younger brother of the short-reigned Tsar Ivan Stefan. After the coup of 1331, which deposed his line and raised up his cousin Ivan Alexander, Shishman sought safety in flight — first among the Tatars, then in Byzantium.

His settling in Constantinople provoked a diplomatic clash. Tsar Ivan Alexander insistently demanded that the fugitive be handed over to him and even issued an ultimatum. The matter was so important that the synkletos convened over it under the presidency of Patriarch John XIV Kalekas. On behalf of Empress Anna of Savoy, the grand domestic John Kantakouzenos refused — it did not befit, he declared, the Roman emperors to surrender those who had sought refuge with them — and in turn put counter-demands to the Bulgarian embassy.

Shishman remained in Constantinople, but his later fate is unknown — the sources lose sight of him amid the new Byzantine civil war.