Shishman of Vidin

Shishman was a despot of Vidin of Cuman origin — the founder of the Shishman dynasty, the last royal house of medieval Bulgaria. He rose as an independent lord of the region of Vidin at the end of the thirteenth century.

Through marriage to an Asen princess — an unnamed daughter of Theodora-Anna and Sevastokrator Peter, a granddaughter of Tsar Ivan Asen II — Shishman bound his house to the prestigious dynasty of the Asens. From this marriage came his sons Tsar Michael III Shishman Asen and Despot Belaur and his daughter Keratsa Petritsa, the mother of Tsar Ivan Alexander. Thus, through the two lines of his descendants, the house of Vidin inherited the Tarnovo throne.