From the 16th century onwards, the heads of the family styled themselves as "Prince of Macedonia, Duke and Count of Drivasto and Durazzo", though other titles were also sometimes used.

The last prince of the family was Giovanni Andrea II Angeli, who in 1698 transferred the Constantinian Order to Francesco Farnese, the Duke of Parma, whose descendants remain grand masters to this day.

The Angeli claimed to be direct male-line descendants of Emperor Isaac II Angelos (r. 1185–1195, 1203–1204), and thus a branch of the namesake Byzantine Greek dynasty.

1451–73), a Serbian magnate, and Mahmud Pasha Angelović (1420–1474), who served as the grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Mehmed II, in 1456–1466 and 1472–1474.

[11] The claims of the Angeli of imperial descent were accepted in Western Europe without much dispute: there were already several known descendants of Byzantine nobility across the continent, legitimate or not, so the addition of another family was not surprising.

[14] Pal's younger brother Pjetër (later called Pietro in Italian sources) married Lucia Span, the daughter of Peter Spani, one of the most prominent Christian leaders in Albania.

[16] In 1545, the brothers Andrea and Paolo Angeli,[17] sons of Pjetër,[13] were officially acknowledged as descendants of the Angelos emperors by Pope Paul III (r. 1534–1549).

[12] Claims that the Constantinian Order represented an ancient imperial institution, which many Byzantine emperors had supposedly served as grand masters for, is fantasy.

[21] The earliest reference to the Constantinian Order in a form resembling that of the Angeli is from 1522, when statutes were issued by the grand master "Giovanni II Cesare Nemagna Paleologos, prince of the Slavonians and Romans".

No later members of Giovanni Cesare's Nemangna family (possibly claiming connections to the Serbian Nemanjić dynasty) ever challenged the Angeli for the grand mastership.

For the most part, such claimants were opportunists without actual links to Greek or Albanian families, and the Angeli were consistently successful in exposing fraudsters and maintaining their own rights.

[34] Through surviving documents it is apparent that Laura had actually wished to marry and did not want to become a nun, but had been forced to by Francesco Farnese, who did not want to risk her having children; a potential future generation of rivals to his claim.

[26] Lazier referred to himself as "Johannes Antonius Angelus Flavius Comnenus Lascaris Palaeologus" and as "Princeps de genere Imperatorum Orientis" and claimed connection with the Constantinian Order.