Note 168 — Chapter IV · VENETIAN SUPREMACY

This story is somewhat confused. Ragusan writers declare that the princess in question was deposed, together with her son, by a rebellious noble, Alexander, who made himself Tsar and offered to place Bulgaria under Servian suzerainty if Stephen secured the fugitives for him. But after Velbužd Michael’s widow fled, and his first wife, Anna, Milutin’s daughter, was placed on the throne jointly with her son Šišman II. by the victorious Serbs. Stephen Uroš died immediately after, strangled by his son Stephen Dušan, who held Bulgaria as a vassal state. Then came the rebellion of Alexander, who forced Šišman and his mother to fly from Bulgaria, and induced Dušan to marry his sister. Anna fled to Ragusa, and perhaps this may be the princess to whom the local historians allude. On the other hand, it does not seem likely that Dušan would wish to capture her, his own kinswoman. See Jireček’s Geschichte der Bulgaren, 290-298.