![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
transemacabreSo I'm sure some of y'all have seen shows like The Borgias, The Tudors, or I CLAUDIUS at some point. If so, you know ancient and medieval royal dynasties were made up of power-hungry kings, scheming matriarchs, and yards of cleavage. Hell, Game of Thrones is nothing more than a warmed-over version of the Wars of the Roses. Well, for my money, the Komnenoi dynasty of Byzantium was quite possibly the most vicious and destructive of all medieval dynasties; you can read more about them in my As The Komnenoi World Turns. But these poisonous families give them a run for their money.
I. The Kometopulte Dynasty of Bulgaria
This dynasty only lasted from about 976 to 1018, but in those few short decades the Kometopoulte family tried its damndest to set new standards in back-stabbing, cruelty, and gore. It says something that Bulgaria's next dynasty, the snakelike Asenids, who took power in the early years of the 13th century, seem positively wholesome in comparison.
The Macedonia that the four sons of count (komita) Nikola were born into was a scary place, wracked by invasions and in-fighting. A popular saying in this region was that one Macedonian was a komita, two Macedonians was a pair of komitas, and three Macedonians was two komitas plus a traitor. Anyway, Nikola's sons were David, Moses, Samuil, and Aron, who joined together to tell the invading Byzantines where to stick it. David was murdered by miscreants and Moses was nailed on the head by a stone thrown during a seige. That left Samuil and Aron to fight on, which they did. The Byzantines tried to throw a wrench into this by releasing the two "rightful heirs" to the Bulgarian throne, both of whom had been raised in captivity in Constantinople: Boris and Roman. The Byzantines hoped that Boris and Roman would divide the loyalties of the rebellious Bulgarians and Macedonians, but what actually happened was that Boris was whacked as soon as he walked over the border, thanks to his fancy Greek clothing, and Roman was dragged before Samuil. Like Simon Phoenix in Demolition Man, Samuil felt sorry for Roman because he didn't have his balls (no, really, he'd been castrated in Byzantine custody) so he made Roman tsar with himself as official ass-kicker.
This went on for awhile, and eventually Samuil became suspicious of his last remaining brother, Aron. He found out Aron had been conspiring against him with the Byzantines and Samuil, evidently a believer in "scorched earth" tactics, had Aron put to death along with all but one of his children. Aron's son Ivan Vladislav only survived because he was a toddler at the time and Samuil's son Gavril Radomir argued that it was totally uncool to murder a toddler.
The untried young emperor, Basileios II, was tired of Samuil sending his soldiers to crack skulls so in 986 he set out with a grand army to show him who was boss. Samuil led him right into am ambush and sent him fleeing back to Constantinople, humiliated. This would lead to a grudge match with Bulgaria that would consume Basileios' life and give him the nickname "Bulgar-Slayer". The Byzantines showed back up and soon captured Roman. In another battle, Samuil was badly wounded and he and his son Gavril only survived by laying on the battlefield and pretending to be dead. Roman died in Byzantine captivity so Samuil became tsar, to the surprise of no one.
For more than two decades, Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire would fight it out with gory ferocity. Gavril Radomir won an ally by marrying the Hungarian king's daughter, but a couple of years later he fell head over heels in love with a bodacious Greek slave girl and sent his pregnant Hungarian wife back to her father. Inadvertently he saved her life and the life of their unborn son, Petar Delyan, with his selfishness, getting them both far from the cutthroat Bulgarian court.
In 1014, Basileios II's army overwhelmed the Bulgarians at Kleidion, and took something like 14,000 captives. He had them all blinded, except for 1 in 100 men, who would be lucky enough to be left one eye, so as to lead the other 100 home. When he saw his mutilated army, Samuil dropped dead of a heart attack. His son Gavril Radomir was only tsar for a few months before his cousin, Ivan Vladislav, murdered him (yes, the same Ivan Vladislav who's life he had personally saved years before!). Almost the first thing Ivan Vladislav did as the new tsar was eliminate Gavril Radomir's Greek concubine and her children, along with Gavril's brother-in-law, the Serb prince (and later saint) Jovan Vladimir. Ivan Vladislav died under mysterious circumstances while beseiging the city of Dyrrhachion in 1018.
Ivan Vladislav's daughter Ekaterina became the empress of Isaakios I Komnenos; she and her daughter were veiled as nuns after his death. Ekaterina's brother Presiyan tried to assert himself as the new tsar in 1018, but was taken into Byzantine captivity and eventually blinded after one too many schemes. Another son of Ivan Vladislav, Alusian, joined up with his cousin Petar Delyan when he lead a Bulgarian uprising against the Byzantines in 1040, but one night while Delyan was drunk, Alusian blinded him and cut off his nose with a kitchen knife. He then sold out the rebels to the Byzantine emperor in return for a cushy life. Alusian's daughter, Anna, married Romanos IV Diogenes. Yet another son of Ivan Vladislav, Troian, became the great-grandfather of Irene Doukaina, the empress of Alexios I Komnenos, and by-the-way progenitor of the entire shady, scheming Komnenoi dynasty.
II. The Pornocracy
If you've heard Marozia's name at all, it was probably as a footnote to the legend of Pope Joan, a fable about a woman who crossdressed and became pope, only to be found out when she went into labor and gave birth. Marozia and her family may have inspired the legend, but much like Vlad Dracula, the true story is far more interesting than the legend.
Marozia was lover, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother of popes. She forged an empire with little more than her wiles and her thighs, and her descendants would rule Rome for centuries, making and breaking popes, and influencing the politics and history of the Western world.
Marozia was the daughter of the senator Teofilatto and his wife, Theodora. Her father was a crony of Pope Sergius III and quite possibly the most powerful man in Rome. Luitprand of Cremona says that "from her early youth, [Marozia] had been inflamed by the fires of Venus"; Marozia set her sights on none other than the pope himself. She flashed him her tits, and soon Sergius III was shacked up with her in happily unwedded bliss. Marozia gave birth to a son, Giovanni, who was widely believed to have been fathered by Sergius III.
Sergius III, who was probably about the same age as Marozia's father, died in 911. Marozia's parents married her off to a soldier-of-fortune, Alberico, who a few years earlier had killed the duke of Spoleto and usurped his lands and title. He was immensely powerful and just as ambitious as Marozia and together they had a small pack of children.
Meanwhile, her mother Theodora became enamoured of a deacon and, "captivated by his handsome appearance", she seduced him and compelled him to come to Rome. "Theodora, like a harlot," Luitprand tells us, "fearing she would have few opportunities to bed her sweetheart, forced him to abandon his bishopric and take for himself -- O monstrous crime! -- the Papacy of Rome." Her lover became Pope John X in 914.
Marozia and Alberico schemed to take more power for themselves. They got on the bad side of Pope John X, who drove Alberico from the city, and shortly afterward Alberico was murdered. Pope John X forced Marozia to look at the mutilated body of her husband and take heed; that just seems to have pissed her off.
Marozia turned right around and married Guido of Tuscany in 925. They moved against Pope John X, seized him and threw him into prison, where he was then smothered. Marozia then hand-picked a couple of guys to be pope for the next couple of years until her own son, Giovanni, was old enough to put on the funny hat and become Pope John XI.
Her husband Guido having died in 929, and with Marozia not content with merely being a dowager duchess, a dowager marchesa, and the mother of the pope, she decided to go for broke and become queen of Italy. She became engaged to King Hugo of Italy, a marriage that was technically illegal since his half-brother was her deceased second husband, Guido. But that's what having a pope in the family is good for.
Pope John XI presided over his mother's wedding in 932 at the Castel Sant'Angelo, but the celebrations were marred by a conflict between Hugo and Marozia's teenage son, Alberico II (one of several sons she'd had with her deceased husband, Alberico). During the ceremony, Alberico was holding a bowl of water for Hugo to wash his hands, but spilled a little of it. Hugo slapped him in the face and called him "clumsy", and the offended Alberico fled the wedding and incited a riot in the streets. The Romans rallied behind him and attacked the Castel Sant'Angelo. Hugo bravely abandoned his wife and shimmied out the window on a rope, leaving Marozia and Pope John XI behind. Alberico and his army of angry Romans drove out Hugo and his men by throwing sticks, stones, shoes, calzones, and anything else at hand at their heads. Eighteen-year-old Alberico II imprisoned his mother and brother and declared himself "glorious prince and senator of all the Romans." He also added insult to injury by banging his stepsister Alda, King Hugo's daughter. To be fair, they'd only been stepsiblings for a grand total of like 25 minutes.
Marozia died in prison. Her son Pope John XI was allowed to perform purely spiritual duties until his own death in 935. Alberico ably ruled Rome until he died in 954, and on his deathbed he nominated his own son, Ottaviano, as pope.
Ottaviano, son of Alberico II and Alda, became Pope John XII, and continued the proud family tradition by becoming one of the most depraved popes in history. A small sampling of the charges against him in the Patrologia Latina include: ordaining a bishop in a horse stable, blinding and then killing his confessor, castrating and then killing a subdeacon, fornicating with various women including his own niece, turning the sacred palace into a brothel, invoking the names of pagan gods, and toasting to the devil with wine, among many, many others. He died while busily breaking Commandments Six and Nine with a married woman; her husband walked in on them and threw the pope out a window.
Several more popes of this family were to follow, but I definitely don't want to forget Marozia's great-great-grandson, Pope Benedict IX, the so-called "child pope" (he was very young when he became pope, probably in his mid-teens). Benedict IX was the nephew of popes Benedict VIII and John XIX (both of whom were total squares by the standards of this family). By the time he became pope in 1033, the papal throne was practically a family heirloom. Benedict IX spent his reign snorting blow off the pert asses of whores, throwing wild bisexual orgies in the Lateran palace, and raping female pilgrims. He surprised everyone by falling in love with his own cousin and desiring to marry her and produce a family of little deviants. Since a pope can't exactly get married, Benedict IX sold the papacy to his godfather, but later regretted the decision and tried to forcibly retake his old position several times. Peter Damian records a delightful story that Benedict IX, "a demon from hell in the guise of a priest", was so evil that instead of dying he mutated into a donkey-bear-man creature cursed to haunt the world until the Last Judgment.
Such was the legacy of Marozia, who's descendants made and unmade emperors and kings and guided the souls of millions.
III. The Rurikids
If there's one problem with the Rurikids, its that they were the Duggars of medieval royal families. Seriously, at any given time between the Vikings settling Russia and the Mongol invasion, there were something like 10,000 Rurikids running around.
This is the family that eventually would spawn Ivan IV, Ivan Grozny, Ivan the Terrible. And it took the combined efforts of centuries of Mongol rule and Ivan Grozny to slaughter this family into extinction.
Vladimir Sviatoslavich, the first prince of the Kievan Rus of real international importance, brought Christianity to Ukraine and Russia and is venerated as a saint. He was also a brutal warlord and rapist who chose Orthodox Christianity over Islam and Judaism, by the account of the chronicler Nestor, because he wasn't willing to forsake pork and alcohol. In 980, when the lady Rogneda preferred his brother Yaropolk to him, Vladimir captured Rogneda's city, killed her father and brothers, raped her, and forced her to marry him. That same year he lured Yaropolk to him with talk of peace, then had him jumped and murdered. Not content with Rogneda, Vladimir took Yaropolk's concubine as his own. She gave birth to a son, Sviatopolk, who may have been biologically Yaropolk's child.
When Vladimir died in 1015, a battle royale began amongst his many sons. What precisely happened is hotly debated. Russian sources claim that Sviatopolk assassinated his younger brothers Boris and Gleb; a Norse source seems to suggest that another brother, Yaroslav, the eventual ruler of Kiev, had Boris murdered. Yaroslav represented himself as a legitimate son of Vladimir by Rogneda, but analysis of his skeleton shows he was ten years too young to have been Rogneda's son; probably he was an illegitimate son of a concubine. Anyway, Yaroslav's daughters became queens of Hungary, Norway, and France, and his sons produced legions of little Rurikids.
I. The Kometopulte Dynasty of Bulgaria
This dynasty only lasted from about 976 to 1018, but in those few short decades the Kometopoulte family tried its damndest to set new standards in back-stabbing, cruelty, and gore. It says something that Bulgaria's next dynasty, the snakelike Asenids, who took power in the early years of the 13th century, seem positively wholesome in comparison.
The Macedonia that the four sons of count (komita) Nikola were born into was a scary place, wracked by invasions and in-fighting. A popular saying in this region was that one Macedonian was a komita, two Macedonians was a pair of komitas, and three Macedonians was two komitas plus a traitor. Anyway, Nikola's sons were David, Moses, Samuil, and Aron, who joined together to tell the invading Byzantines where to stick it. David was murdered by miscreants and Moses was nailed on the head by a stone thrown during a seige. That left Samuil and Aron to fight on, which they did. The Byzantines tried to throw a wrench into this by releasing the two "rightful heirs" to the Bulgarian throne, both of whom had been raised in captivity in Constantinople: Boris and Roman. The Byzantines hoped that Boris and Roman would divide the loyalties of the rebellious Bulgarians and Macedonians, but what actually happened was that Boris was whacked as soon as he walked over the border, thanks to his fancy Greek clothing, and Roman was dragged before Samuil. Like Simon Phoenix in Demolition Man, Samuil felt sorry for Roman because he didn't have his balls (no, really, he'd been castrated in Byzantine custody) so he made Roman tsar with himself as official ass-kicker.
This went on for awhile, and eventually Samuil became suspicious of his last remaining brother, Aron. He found out Aron had been conspiring against him with the Byzantines and Samuil, evidently a believer in "scorched earth" tactics, had Aron put to death along with all but one of his children. Aron's son Ivan Vladislav only survived because he was a toddler at the time and Samuil's son Gavril Radomir argued that it was totally uncool to murder a toddler.
The untried young emperor, Basileios II, was tired of Samuil sending his soldiers to crack skulls so in 986 he set out with a grand army to show him who was boss. Samuil led him right into am ambush and sent him fleeing back to Constantinople, humiliated. This would lead to a grudge match with Bulgaria that would consume Basileios' life and give him the nickname "Bulgar-Slayer". The Byzantines showed back up and soon captured Roman. In another battle, Samuil was badly wounded and he and his son Gavril only survived by laying on the battlefield and pretending to be dead. Roman died in Byzantine captivity so Samuil became tsar, to the surprise of no one.
For more than two decades, Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire would fight it out with gory ferocity. Gavril Radomir won an ally by marrying the Hungarian king's daughter, but a couple of years later he fell head over heels in love with a bodacious Greek slave girl and sent his pregnant Hungarian wife back to her father. Inadvertently he saved her life and the life of their unborn son, Petar Delyan, with his selfishness, getting them both far from the cutthroat Bulgarian court.
In 1014, Basileios II's army overwhelmed the Bulgarians at Kleidion, and took something like 14,000 captives. He had them all blinded, except for 1 in 100 men, who would be lucky enough to be left one eye, so as to lead the other 100 home. When he saw his mutilated army, Samuil dropped dead of a heart attack. His son Gavril Radomir was only tsar for a few months before his cousin, Ivan Vladislav, murdered him (yes, the same Ivan Vladislav who's life he had personally saved years before!). Almost the first thing Ivan Vladislav did as the new tsar was eliminate Gavril Radomir's Greek concubine and her children, along with Gavril's brother-in-law, the Serb prince (and later saint) Jovan Vladimir. Ivan Vladislav died under mysterious circumstances while beseiging the city of Dyrrhachion in 1018.
Ivan Vladislav's daughter Ekaterina became the empress of Isaakios I Komnenos; she and her daughter were veiled as nuns after his death. Ekaterina's brother Presiyan tried to assert himself as the new tsar in 1018, but was taken into Byzantine captivity and eventually blinded after one too many schemes. Another son of Ivan Vladislav, Alusian, joined up with his cousin Petar Delyan when he lead a Bulgarian uprising against the Byzantines in 1040, but one night while Delyan was drunk, Alusian blinded him and cut off his nose with a kitchen knife. He then sold out the rebels to the Byzantine emperor in return for a cushy life. Alusian's daughter, Anna, married Romanos IV Diogenes. Yet another son of Ivan Vladislav, Troian, became the great-grandfather of Irene Doukaina, the empress of Alexios I Komnenos, and by-the-way progenitor of the entire shady, scheming Komnenoi dynasty.
II. The Pornocracy
If you've heard Marozia's name at all, it was probably as a footnote to the legend of Pope Joan, a fable about a woman who crossdressed and became pope, only to be found out when she went into labor and gave birth. Marozia and her family may have inspired the legend, but much like Vlad Dracula, the true story is far more interesting than the legend.
Marozia was lover, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother of popes. She forged an empire with little more than her wiles and her thighs, and her descendants would rule Rome for centuries, making and breaking popes, and influencing the politics and history of the Western world.
Marozia was the daughter of the senator Teofilatto and his wife, Theodora. Her father was a crony of Pope Sergius III and quite possibly the most powerful man in Rome. Luitprand of Cremona says that "from her early youth, [Marozia] had been inflamed by the fires of Venus"; Marozia set her sights on none other than the pope himself. She flashed him her tits, and soon Sergius III was shacked up with her in happily unwedded bliss. Marozia gave birth to a son, Giovanni, who was widely believed to have been fathered by Sergius III.
Sergius III, who was probably about the same age as Marozia's father, died in 911. Marozia's parents married her off to a soldier-of-fortune, Alberico, who a few years earlier had killed the duke of Spoleto and usurped his lands and title. He was immensely powerful and just as ambitious as Marozia and together they had a small pack of children.
Meanwhile, her mother Theodora became enamoured of a deacon and, "captivated by his handsome appearance", she seduced him and compelled him to come to Rome. "Theodora, like a harlot," Luitprand tells us, "fearing she would have few opportunities to bed her sweetheart, forced him to abandon his bishopric and take for himself -- O monstrous crime! -- the Papacy of Rome." Her lover became Pope John X in 914.
Marozia and Alberico schemed to take more power for themselves. They got on the bad side of Pope John X, who drove Alberico from the city, and shortly afterward Alberico was murdered. Pope John X forced Marozia to look at the mutilated body of her husband and take heed; that just seems to have pissed her off.
Marozia turned right around and married Guido of Tuscany in 925. They moved against Pope John X, seized him and threw him into prison, where he was then smothered. Marozia then hand-picked a couple of guys to be pope for the next couple of years until her own son, Giovanni, was old enough to put on the funny hat and become Pope John XI.
Her husband Guido having died in 929, and with Marozia not content with merely being a dowager duchess, a dowager marchesa, and the mother of the pope, she decided to go for broke and become queen of Italy. She became engaged to King Hugo of Italy, a marriage that was technically illegal since his half-brother was her deceased second husband, Guido. But that's what having a pope in the family is good for.
Pope John XI presided over his mother's wedding in 932 at the Castel Sant'Angelo, but the celebrations were marred by a conflict between Hugo and Marozia's teenage son, Alberico II (one of several sons she'd had with her deceased husband, Alberico). During the ceremony, Alberico was holding a bowl of water for Hugo to wash his hands, but spilled a little of it. Hugo slapped him in the face and called him "clumsy", and the offended Alberico fled the wedding and incited a riot in the streets. The Romans rallied behind him and attacked the Castel Sant'Angelo. Hugo bravely abandoned his wife and shimmied out the window on a rope, leaving Marozia and Pope John XI behind. Alberico and his army of angry Romans drove out Hugo and his men by throwing sticks, stones, shoes, calzones, and anything else at hand at their heads. Eighteen-year-old Alberico II imprisoned his mother and brother and declared himself "glorious prince and senator of all the Romans." He also added insult to injury by banging his stepsister Alda, King Hugo's daughter. To be fair, they'd only been stepsiblings for a grand total of like 25 minutes.
Marozia died in prison. Her son Pope John XI was allowed to perform purely spiritual duties until his own death in 935. Alberico ably ruled Rome until he died in 954, and on his deathbed he nominated his own son, Ottaviano, as pope.
Ottaviano, son of Alberico II and Alda, became Pope John XII, and continued the proud family tradition by becoming one of the most depraved popes in history. A small sampling of the charges against him in the Patrologia Latina include: ordaining a bishop in a horse stable, blinding and then killing his confessor, castrating and then killing a subdeacon, fornicating with various women including his own niece, turning the sacred palace into a brothel, invoking the names of pagan gods, and toasting to the devil with wine, among many, many others. He died while busily breaking Commandments Six and Nine with a married woman; her husband walked in on them and threw the pope out a window.
Several more popes of this family were to follow, but I definitely don't want to forget Marozia's great-great-grandson, Pope Benedict IX, the so-called "child pope" (he was very young when he became pope, probably in his mid-teens). Benedict IX was the nephew of popes Benedict VIII and John XIX (both of whom were total squares by the standards of this family). By the time he became pope in 1033, the papal throne was practically a family heirloom. Benedict IX spent his reign snorting blow off the pert asses of whores, throwing wild bisexual orgies in the Lateran palace, and raping female pilgrims. He surprised everyone by falling in love with his own cousin and desiring to marry her and produce a family of little deviants. Since a pope can't exactly get married, Benedict IX sold the papacy to his godfather, but later regretted the decision and tried to forcibly retake his old position several times. Peter Damian records a delightful story that Benedict IX, "a demon from hell in the guise of a priest", was so evil that instead of dying he mutated into a donkey-bear-man creature cursed to haunt the world until the Last Judgment.
Such was the legacy of Marozia, who's descendants made and unmade emperors and kings and guided the souls of millions.
III. The Rurikids
If there's one problem with the Rurikids, its that they were the Duggars of medieval royal families. Seriously, at any given time between the Vikings settling Russia and the Mongol invasion, there were something like 10,000 Rurikids running around.
This is the family that eventually would spawn Ivan IV, Ivan Grozny, Ivan the Terrible. And it took the combined efforts of centuries of Mongol rule and Ivan Grozny to slaughter this family into extinction.
Vladimir Sviatoslavich, the first prince of the Kievan Rus of real international importance, brought Christianity to Ukraine and Russia and is venerated as a saint. He was also a brutal warlord and rapist who chose Orthodox Christianity over Islam and Judaism, by the account of the chronicler Nestor, because he wasn't willing to forsake pork and alcohol. In 980, when the lady Rogneda preferred his brother Yaropolk to him, Vladimir captured Rogneda's city, killed her father and brothers, raped her, and forced her to marry him. That same year he lured Yaropolk to him with talk of peace, then had him jumped and murdered. Not content with Rogneda, Vladimir took Yaropolk's concubine as his own. She gave birth to a son, Sviatopolk, who may have been biologically Yaropolk's child.
When Vladimir died in 1015, a battle royale began amongst his many sons. What precisely happened is hotly debated. Russian sources claim that Sviatopolk assassinated his younger brothers Boris and Gleb; a Norse source seems to suggest that another brother, Yaroslav, the eventual ruler of Kiev, had Boris murdered. Yaroslav represented himself as a legitimate son of Vladimir by Rogneda, but analysis of his skeleton shows he was ten years too young to have been Rogneda's son; probably he was an illegitimate son of a concubine. Anyway, Yaroslav's daughters became queens of Hungary, Norway, and France, and his sons produced legions of little Rurikids.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 08:17 am (UTC)Another dynasty I didn't mention before is that of medieval Serbia, the Nemanjić dynasty, a real pack of ravening wolves.
The first monarch, Nemanja, was imprisoned by his brothers in a cave and after he escaped, had them all exiled. He also burned heretics and disinherited his eldest son.
Stefan Prvovenčani was the second son and successor of his father, Nemanja. He married Eudokia, daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexios III, but she accused him of "being drunk from morning til night" and cheating on her rampantly. Stefan responded by ripping the clothes off Eudokia, and throwing her out of his castle in the middle of the night, in her underwear.
Radoslav was the eldest son of Stefan and Eudokia. He married Anna of Epiros, and was entirely in her thrall. She was so hated by the common people that a rebellion ousted them from power.
Vladislav, the younger son of Stefan and Eudokia, took power after his brother Radoslav was deposed. He proved unpopular enough with the nobles that he was replaced by his half-brother.
Uroš was the half-brother of Radoslav and Vladislav, born to Stefan's second marriage to Anna Dandolo. He was therefore half-Venetian and a great-grandson of the notorious doge Enrico Dandolo. Anyway, his elder son Dragutin hated him so much that open warfare broke out between father and son, and Uroš was forced into a monastery.
Dragutin and Milutin were Uroš' sons, and between them they split the country. Milutin was a straight-up psycho. He deprived his nephew of his inheritance, seduced and illegally married his sister-in-law as his second wife, and divorced his third wife to marry a five-year-old Greek princess named Simonis, whom he then raped and left infertile. When his fourth wife Simonis returned to Constantinople to attend her mother's funeral, she refused to return to her husband and her brother forced her to go back to Serbia. When he died, a civil war erupted between his sons and his nephew.
Konstantin was Milutin's son by his second marriage to Erzsébet of Hungary. He was captured by his cousin Vladislav II and crucified to a tree.
Uroš III was Milutin's son by his third wife, Ana of Bulgaria, and his father had sent him as a child hostage to the Mongols. When he finally returned to Serbia, he quarreled with Milutin, who sent him to Constantinople with orders that he be blinded. He was only partially blinded, however. He was triumphant in the three-way war between himself, Konstantin, and Vladislav II. He was eventually deposed by his son, Dušan, and strangled on his orders.
Uroš IV Dušan was the most powerful Serbian king; a lawmaker and a warrior. Under his reign, Serbia almost doubled in size. He died under mysterious circumstances, rumored to be poisoned.
Uroš V was by all accounts a good guy, very atypical for this dynasty, and for that reason was known as "The Weak". Notably, he is the last in a string of three straight Serbian kings who'd been born to Bulgarian princesses. His death ended the dynasty.