Longest lines

The longest Byzantine line, parent to child

Sixteen generations, parent to child, over some 445 years — from Manuel Komnenos to the boy co-emperor Andronikos V Palaiologos, passing from the Komnenoi to the Angeloi to the Palaiologoi through three daughters.

1. Manuel Komnenos (c. 955–1020)
2. John Komnenos (c. 1015–1067)
3. Alexios I Komnenos (c. 1057–1118)
4. Theodora Komnene (1096–)
5. Andronikos Angelos Doukas (c. 1133–1185)
6. Alexios III Angelos (c. 1153–1211)
7. Irene Angelina (c. 1176–)
8. Theodora Palaiologina (c. 1200–)
9. Michael VIII Palaiologos (1223–1282) — 36 years to the next generation
10. Andronikos II Palaiologos (1259–1332) — 18 years to the next generation
11. Michael IX Palaiologos (1277–1320) — 20 years to the next generation
12. Andronikos III Palaiologos (1297–1341) — 35 years to the next generation
13. John V Palaiologos (1332–1391) — 16 years to the next generation
14. Andronikos IV Palaiologos (1348–1385) — 22 years to the next generation
15. John VII Palaiologos (1370–1408) — 30 years to the next generation
16. Andronikos V Palaiologos (1400–1407)

The line starts where the records do. Manuel Erotikos Komnenos served Basil II as a general; no earlier Komnenos is securely documented, and who his own parents were is unknown. His birth year is approximate: modern scholars generally place it in 955 or 960, and the archive follows the earlier date. His son John and grandson Alexios I follow; Alexios seized the throne in 1081, and during his reign the family’s hold on it became hereditary. Almost every birth in this early stretch is approximate, so its gaps between generations are not counted.

The line changes dynasty twice, both times through a daughter. Alexios’s daughter Theodora, born in 1096, married Constantine Angelos, and through her the Angelos family rose: her son Andronikos Angelos Doukas fathered the emperor Alexios III. Alexios III had no son, and in 1199 he married his daughter Irene to Alexios Palaiologos and made him heir. Irene’s daughter Theodora in turn became the mother of Michael VIII Palaiologos, who recovered Constantinople in 1261. The historian Deno Geanakoplos, cited in Michael’s Wikipedia biography, found all three imperial houses that had reigned before the Fourth Crusade took the city in 1204 among his forebears.

Only in the Palaiologan stretch are both ends of a step exactly dated: seven gaps, averaging 25.3 years, the narrowest just 16 between John V and his son Andronikos IV. Those generations fought one another. Andronikos IV rebelled against his father, and his son John VII seized the throne from his grandfather for five months in 1390. The line ends with John VII’s only son, Andronikos V, crowned co-emperor at Thessalonica in 1403 and dead by 1407, aged about seven. His existence went unrecognised by modern scholarship until 1967, and John VII was long taken to have died without children.

Computed from every recorded line in The Byzantine Emperors on Kinlight; written 29 September 2026.