Palaiologos

The Palaiologos were the last and longest-ruling dynasty of the Byzantine Empire. It traces to Nikephoros Palaiologos, an Anatolian commander of the later eleventh century; its members intermarried with the Komnenoi and fled to the Empire of Nicaea after the Fourth Crusade took Constantinople in 1204.

Michael VIII seized power in 1259 and retook Constantinople from the Latin Empire in 1261, founding the dynasty's imperial line. Civil wars, the Black Death and the Ottoman advance shrank the empire, which by 1380 amounted to little more than Constantinople and a few exclaves. A cadet branch inherited the Italian March of Montferrat in 1305 and ruled there until 1533.

Despite the decline, the age saw the Palaiologian Renaissance in art and letters, as migrating Byzantine scholars helped fuel the Italian Renaissance. By the early fifteenth century the emperors were effectively Ottoman clients. The last, Constantine XI, died defending Constantinople against Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453, and the Morea principality fell to the Ottomans in 1460.