Constantine XI Palaeologus Dragases 1404-53
Last Byzantine emperor

Born in Constantinople (Istanbul), he was the fourth son of Manuel II and the Serbian princess, Helen Dragas. During the reign of his elder brother, John VIII, he and his other brothers jointly ruled the despotate of Morea, a Byzantine appanage in the Peloponnese, and on John's death (1448) Constantine succeeded to an empire consisting of little more than Constantinople and its environs, threatened by the vast Ottoman Empire which surrounded it. His proclamation of the union of the Greek Church with Rome (1452) secured only limited military assistance from the West and was repudiated by his indignant subjects. Powerless to prevent the inevitable Ottoman siege, Constantine died fighting in the final Turkish assault.