Leonardo died in Rome at some point in the pontificate of Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492–1503), crushed as his house collapsed on top of him.

[6] Though various local rulers would claim the title of 'despot' thereafter, the despotate was not restored to something close to its original form until the early 15th century, when the Italian noble Carlo I Tocco worked to expand his holdings through conquest.

Carlo I was the son of Leonardo I Tocco, who had been granted the title of Count Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos by the Kingdom of Naples.

The town was then held by his wife, Jevdokija Balšić, but on account of her unpopularity she was deposed by the locals, who appealed to Carlo I to become their ruler instead.

The capital of the despotate, Arta, fell to the Ottomans on 24 March 1449, whereafter all of Leonardo's mainland possessions, save for the three settlements of Vonitza, Varnazza and Angelokastro, were annexed.

[21] After the fall of Arta, Leonardo's domain enjoyed several years of peace, with even the scant possessions on the mainland being free from Ottoman incursions.

In a move which historian William Miller described in 1908 as either excessively "patriotic" or "impolitic", Leonardo joined the Albanian lord Skanderbeg in throwing off Ottoman suzerainty in 1460.

[22] Despite having lost control of virtually the entire mainland, Leonardo still had the support of the Latin populace of his former lands, and actively sought to regain them.

The drawn-out process of Ottoman conquest in Greece and the rest of the Balkans, as well as the ongoing fighting, had made Leonardo's island realm the refuge of thousands of Christian refugees, who were allowed to live in their own somewhat autonomous communities.

Leonardo also participated in the ongoing war to an extent, acting as an intermediary between Venice and the Ottomans and sending occasional military aid to the Venetian forces.

[23] The enthusiastic reception of refugees and lack of attention from the Ottomans ensured that even while the mainland was devastated by war, Leonardo's islands flourished in peace.

When the Byzantine historian George Sphrantzes visited the islands during this time he found them enjoying the period of peace, with Leonardo having become lord in his own right after having put his four regents to death.

[24] Zurita's account of Leonardo as an independent and prosperous ruler, which is corroborated in parts by some other contemporary records, led to many scholars characterizing Leonardo's entire reign as one of prosperity and peace, but this is far from a nuanced picture, given that other records testify to the period being a catastrophe that ended in Ottoman conquest.

[28][29][22] After her death in 1464,[30] Leonardo sought to remarry in order to seal a political alliance, in hopes of saving what remained of his realm.

Venetian revenge came in the form of Venice omitting Leonardo from their 1479 peace treaty with the Ottomans, effectively leaving him as the sole remaining belligerent against Sultan Mehmed II.

Eager for a pretext to invade Leonardo's domain, from which Mehmed eventually hoped to launch an invasion of Italy, the sultan sent a fleet of 29 ships commanded by Gedik Ahmed Pasha, a former grand vizier, to conquer the islands.

Knowing that the Venetians were not going to help him, and that Naples would be unable to, as well as the fact that many of his own non-Latin subjects detested him, Leonardo concluded that fighting against the Ottomans was futile.

When the Ottomans arrived and spotted his treasure-ship, Leonardo decided to flee, hastily boarding a Venetian ship, alongside his wife, his son Carlo, and his brothers Giovanni and Antonio, headed to Taranto in southern Italy [33][34] One-by-one, Leonardo's few remaining possessions quickly fell[35] to the Ottomans in August and September 1479,[16] with officials being killed, castles being burned and many people of the lower classes being carried off.

[38] Papal emissaries met with Leonardo outside the Porta San Giovanni and escorted him to a house he had leased between the Botteghe Oscure and the Via Pellicciaria.

[2] Leonardo's attempts at gaining money from the Papacy may be explained by his facing large debts, since the lands granted to him by Ferdinand were not enough to sustain himself, his family, and his entourage.

Leonardo's brother Antonio briefly succeeded, with the aid of some Catalan mercenaries, to recover the islands of Cephalonia and Zakynthos in 1481.

[3] Leonardo eventually returned to Rome, dying there in the pontificate of Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492–1503), when his house collapsed on top of him.