Andronikos III Palaiologos
Andronikos III took the Byzantine throne from his own grandfather after a civil war lasting seven years. Born in 1297, he was the son of Michael IX and the grandson of Andronikos II, and was heir to an empire already reduced to parts of Greece, Thrace and a shrinking foothold in Asia Minor. The quarrel began badly. He set an ambush for a rival at his mistress's house in 1320, and his own brother Manuel walked into it and was killed; their father Michael IX died of grief within months, and the old emperor disinherited him. The war that followed was fought in phases between 1321 and 1328 and drew in the Serbs and Bulgarians on opposite sides, which is the significant damage — two Byzantine factions each invited a Balkan power in. He took Constantinople in 1328 and confined his grandfather to a monastery. His reign was better than that beginning suggests, largely because of John Kantakouzenos, his friend and chief minister. He reformed the courts, creating a supreme tribunal of four judges; recovered Thessaly and Epirus; and rebuilt a small navy. He lost Asia Minor entirely. Osman's son Orhan took Nicaea in 1331 and Nicomedia in 1337, and Andronikos was wounded and beaten at Pelekanon in 1329 trying to relieve the first. That is the decisive fact of the century: the Ottomans acquired their base while Byzantium was fighting itself. He died in 1341 aged forty-four, and a second civil war began immediately. His son was nine, and the war between the regency and Kantakouzenos brought the Ottomans into Europe as an ally.
- Lived: 1297 CE – 1341 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader
