Komnenos

The Komnenos were a Byzantine military aristocracy, traditionally traced to Komne village in Thrace; their first known member Manuel Erotikos built estates at Kastamon. Isaac I seized the throne in 1057 but abdicated two years later; the family's great age began when his nephew Alexios I became emperor in 1081 after Manzikert.

Alexios, his son John II and his grandson Manuel I, who reigned until 1180, rebuilt imperial power against Normans and Turks, until Manuel's defeat at Myriokephalon in 1176 checked the recovery. Andronikos I, emperor from 1183, was killed in 1185 and the Angeloi took Constantinople; Isaac Komnenos's Cyprus regime fell to Richard I in 1191.

Before the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204, Alexios and David, grandsons of Andronikos I, founded the Empire of Trebizond on the Black Sea. Its Grand Komnenoi outlasted the other Byzantine successor states: Basil held the throne in 1337, from 1332; the empire fell to Mehmed II after a month's siege in 1461. Last emperor David and his family were executed in 1463.