Sophia Palaiologina
1449 – 1503 · Generation XLI · Palaiologos
Sophia (AD 1449 – 1503). Married Ivan around AD 1472. Daughter of Thomas; married Ivan III of Russia, Grand Princess of Moscow. Born Zoe in the Morea, she fled with her family to Corfu when the Ottomans overran the peninsula in 1460, and after her father’s death in 1465 grew up in Rome as a ward of the papacy, in the care of Cardinal Bessarion. The pope proposed her to the widowed Ivan in 1469, hoping to draw Moscow toward Rome, and she was married by proxy in St Peter’s on 1 June 1472 — but she promptly returned to Orthodoxy and wed Ivan in person in the Dormition Cathedral that November. Unusually for a Russian princess, she received foreign envoys herself, and she is believed to have brought Byzantine ceremony to the Kremlin. She bore eleven children and waged a long court rivalry with the heir, Ivan the Young, and later his son Dmitry, which ended in 1502 with her son Vasili crowned co-ruler. She died the next year.
One of 19 people of Palaiologos (1190–1503) in this archive. The last and longest-lived house — it retook the city in 1261 and lost it in 1453.
Line of descent: Manuel Komnenos → John Komnenos → Alexios I Komnenos → Theodora Komnene → Andronikos Angelos Doukas → Alexios III Angelos → Irene Angelina → Theodora Palaiologina → Michael VIII Palaiologos → Andronikos II Palaiologos → Michael IX Palaiologos → Andronikos III Palaiologos → John V Palaiologos → Manuel II Palaiologos → Thomas Palaiologos → Sophia Palaiologina.
Parents
- Thomas Palaiologos (1409 – 1465)
- Catherine Zaccaria (1410 – 1462)
Siblings
- Helena Palaiologina (1431 – 1473)
- Andreas Palaiologos (1453 – 1502)
Partners
- Married Ivan III (1440 – 1505) in 1472
Life
- 1449 — Born
- 1472 — Married Ivan
- 1503 — Died