Prince Lazar
Prince Lazar held the largest of the pieces into which the Serbian empire broke after Dušan, met the Ottomans on the field of Kosovo in June 1389, and was beheaded there after the battle; the defeat became the founding story of the Serbs, the choice of a heavenly kingdom over an earthly one, and his body has been moved five times as the nation moved. He was born about 1329 into the minor nobility and rose at the court of Dušan and of Dušan's son Uroš, the last of the Nemanjić line, as the empire fell apart among its magnates. When Uroš died childless in 1371, weeks after the Ottomans had destroyed the Mrnjavčević brothers at the Maritsa, Lazar was the strongest lord left in the Morava valley. He took the title of prince rather than king, married his daughters to the neighbouring lords, made peace between the Serbian church and the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1375 after the schism Dušan's imperial title had caused, and built the monastery of Ravanica, where the frescoes show him as a founder. The Ottomans under Murad I had taken Niš by 1386 and were pressing up the Morava. On 15 June 1389, St Vitus's Day, Lazar with his son-in-law Vuk Branković and a Bosnian contingent met Murad's army at Kosovo Polje near Priština. Murad was killed, by the sources' most repeated account by a Serbian knight who got through to his tent. Lazar was captured and executed, and Murad's son Bayezid held the field and went home to secure his throne. Both sides had lost their ruler and both claimed victory at first. Lazar's widow Milica made peace as Bayezid's vassal, and his son Stefan fought for the Ottomans at Ankara. The church made him a martyr within a decade, the epic poems made him choose heaven, and the vidovdan became the day on which Serbs date everything from the battle to 1914.
- Lived: 1329 CE – 1389 CE
- Nationality: Serbian
- Roles: prince, monarch, saint
