Rise To The Throne
Born between 1280 and 1292 Michael Shishman was the son of the despot Shishman of Vidin by an unnamed daughter of the sebastokrator Peter and Anna (Theodora), herself daughter of Ivan Asen II (r. 1218-1241) and Irene Komnene of Epirus. He was also a distant cousin of his predecessors on the Bulgarian throne, Theodore Svetoslav (r. 1300-1321) and George Terter II (r. 1321-1322). After the peace between his father and Stefan Milutin in 1292, Michael Shishman was engaged to Milutin's daughter Anna Neda and they married in 1298 or 1299.
Since the middle of the 13th century, the area of Vidin had been autonomous under ineffective Bulgarian overlordship, and was ruled successively by Yakov Svetoslav (died 1276), Shishman (died between 1308 and 1313), and then Michael Shishman. Shishman and his son received the high courtly title of despotēs from their cousin Theodore Svetoslav and the latter was referred to in a contemporary Venetian source as a Despot of Bulgaria and Lord of Vidin. With the death of the Serbian king Stefan Milutin, Michael Shishman was able to follow a more active policy in the Bulgarian capital Tarnovo. He soon became a leading noble in the internal affairs of the country and, on the childless death of young George Terter II in 1323, Michael Shishman was elected emperor of Bulgaria by the nobility. According to some historians he was chosen because he was a descendant of the Asen dynasty and interpret his ascenсion to the throne not as the beginning of a new dynasty but rather as a continuation of the House of Asen. His half-brother, Belaur, succeeded him as despot of Vidin.
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