Lazarević

The Lazarević were a short-lived Serbian royal house that ruled Moravian Serbia and the Serbian Despotate. Its founder Lazar Hrebeljanović married Milica of the collateral Nemanjić line around 1353 and, as the Nemanjić dynasty died out, built up a principality in central Serbia from 1371. In 1389 Lazar led a Balkan coalition against Sultan Murad I at the Battle of Kosovo, where both commanders were killed.

His son Stefan Lazarević ruled first as an Ottoman vassal and then, after receiving the despot's title from Byzantium in 1402, as an independent lord.

Allied with Hungary, he issued the Code of Mines in 1412 to develop the silver mines at Novo Brdo, and won fame as a poet and patron of scholars. Childless, he named his nephew George Branković heir and died in 1427, whereupon the dynasty was succeeded by the Branković.