Manuel Kantakouzenos

Manuel Kantakouzenos (c. 1326–1380) was the second son of Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos and Irene Asanina, and the first of the long-ruling despots of the Morea, close kin of the Constantinople emperors. His father made him governor of Veria in 1343; when Stefan Dušan took it in 1347, Manuel took refuge in Thessaly.

He led Constantinople's defense against the Genoese in 1348–1349, then reached the Morea in 1349 and crushed the local archontes. When John V forced John VI to abdicate, Manuel resisted the emperor's appointees until the new regime recognized him. Peace with his Latin neighbors, an alliance against Murad I's raids, and Albanian settlers for the depopulated land gave the peninsula a long period of prosperity.

An army he led in the mid-1370s in a dispute over Gardiki was crushed by Francesco Sansverino. Manuel died at Mistra in 1380, succeeded by his elder brother Matthew.