The civil war weakened the empire even further, leading to the loss of soldiers and resources and making it difficult to defend against Ottoman expansion.

Following that, he sailed to Venice, where he negotiated a treaty in which the Venetians would cancel the Emperor's debt in return for the island of Tenedos.

On leaving Byzantine soil, he left his two sons, Andronikos IV and Manuel, to manage Constantinople and Thessalonica, respectively.

Shortly after Andronikos was imprisoned, John V sold Tenedos to the Venetians on similar terms to previous failed agreement.

[5] Together with his son, John VII, who was crowned as co-emperor in 1376, there were now no less than four emperors and one Despot in Byzantium, all of them more or less pawns in the policies of the Ottomans and the Italian city-states.

[8] After John V entered the capital, Constantinople, Andronikos IV fled to Genoese Galata and stayed there two years.

However he held hostage for a time his mother, Helena Kantakouzene, and her father, the former emperor John VI Kantakouzenos.

Later on, the Venetians and Genoese ended their war and agreed to depopulate Tenedos and raze its fortifications, hence transforming it to a neutral territory.