ANDRONICO III PALEO-LOGO, IMPERATORE DI B

ANDRONICUS III PALAEOLOGUS, emperor of the Byzantine Empire. — Second son of Michael IX, who was son and co-emperor of Andronicus II, he became the heir presumptive of his grandfather when his father died in 1320. The young Andronicus’s dissolute lifestyle soon led to a serious rift with the elderly Andronicus II, who considered disinheriting his grandson. In opposition to this, a group of malcontents around the old emperor, led by John Cantacuzenus, took action, and civil war soon broke out, ending with the abdication of Andronicus II. The new emperor (1328–41), however, ceded control to Cantacuzenus, who began to prepare his own bid for the throne, despite the opposition of the empress Anna of Savoy. The internal crisis in Byzantium facilitated the rise of the Serbs under Stephen Dušan (1335), while the Ottomans seized the principal Byzantine cities in Asia, reaching the shores of the Sea of Marmara, threatening Thrace and Constantinople.