Kantakouzenos

The Kantakouzenos were a wealthy landowning family of the later Byzantine Empire, probably originating in Asia Minor. First mentioned campaigning against the Cumans in 1094, they held vast estates in the Peloponnese by the Fourth Crusade. Michael became Byzantine governor of the Morea in 1308; his son John became regent after Andronikos III died in 1341.

John fought the civil war of 1341 to 1347 and entered Constantinople as Emperor John VI. He made his son Matthew co-emperor in 1353, but a second civil war ended with his abdication into a monastery in 1354 and Matthew's surrender in 1357.

The family kept the Morea under Manuel from 1349 to 1380 and then Matthew and his son Demetrios, until Theodore I Palaiologos took over in 1383. Theodora married the bey Orhan I, linking the house to the Ottomans.