Komnenos - The Later Family

The Later Family

Several weeks before the occupation of Constantinople by crusaders in 1204, one branch of the Komnenoi fled back to their homelands in Paphlagonia, on the Black Sea, and set up the Empire of Trebizond. Their first 'emperor', named Alexios I, was the grandson of Emperor Andronikos I. These emperors – the "Grand Komnenoi" (Megaloi Komnenoi or Megalokomnenoi) as they were known – ruled in Trebizond for over 250 years, until 1461, when David Komnenos was defeated and executed by the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II. A princess of the Trebizond branch married an Ottoman Sultan and was the mother of prince Yahya (born 1585), who reportedly became a Christian yet spent much of his life attempting to gain the Ottoman throne.

Another branch of the family founded in 1204 a Despotate of Epirus, under Michael I Komnenos Doukas, great-grandson of Emperor Alexios I. Helena Doukaina Komnene, a child of that branch of the family, married Guy I De La Roche thereby uniting the Komnenos and the De La Roche houses- with Komnenos family members eventually becoming Dukes of Athens.

One renegade member of the family, also named Isaac, established a separate "empire" on Cyprus in 1184, which lasted until 1191, when the island was taken from him by Richard I of England during the Third Crusade.

When the eastern Empire was restored in 1261 at Constantinople, it was a family closely related to the Komnenoi, the Palaiologos family, who were the imperial house. The Palaiologoi ruled until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.