Kantakouzenos

The first civil war broke out between 1341–1347 with the Empress, the Patriarch, and Apokaukos on one side against the powerful Grand domestic John VI Kantakouzenos on the other.

Wanting to seize power for himself, John V initiated a second civil war between 1352–1357 in which he emerged victorious as the sole Byzantine emperor, decisively deposing the Kantakouzenoi from the throne.

Nicol and Kazhdan favour the etymology forwarded by Konstantinos Amantos, according to which the name Kantakouzenos derives from kata-Kouzenan (Greek: κατὰ-κουζηνᾶν or κατὰ-κουζηνόν, lit.

[5] In the Komnenian period, members of the family are attested as military officials: the sebastos John Kantakouzenos was a general under Manuel I Komnenos and lead many successful campaigns between 1150–1153; he was killed in the Battle of Myriokephalon in 1176.

In the 13th century members of the family appeared in the Peloponnese and Nicaea[6] and some of them were accepted into the elite of the Byzantine society, the hereditary aristocracy, known as eugeneis ('well-born').

Disputes over regency were raised between two opposing aristocratic factions; on one side stood Andronikos III's friend and powerful Grand domestic John Kantakouzenos, who was proclaimed regent and was soon recognised as co-emperor by his armies.

Defeated, he was forced to resign marking the end of the imperial Kantakouzenos family (John VI had already been removed from power and retired in a monastery in 1354).

[12] It is generally believed that John, about whom relatively few documents have survived, died childless, and that the numerous Kantakouzenoi of the following generation, as well as the historian Theodore Spandounes and the wife of genealogist Hugues Busac, trace their descent from Matthew through Demetrios.