Thomais Orsini

Thomais of Epeiros (bc 1330) was queen-consort of tsar Symeon Oureses Palaiologos.

Queen Thomais, born Thomais Komnene Angelina, was a native-born daughter of Northern Greece, and her antecedents are highly Greek, displaying a lot of tragedy and drama. Her father was murdered by poison (in 1335), allegedly by her mother, his wife. And the father had himself as a young man murdered (in 1323) his elder brother, the previous sovereign, the uncle Thomais never saw - in order to ascend the throne himself. The said uncle had himself as a youth murdered (in 1318) the uncle of these brothers, the preceding sovereign, and married the murdered one's widow, technically his own aunt - all that in order to ascend the throne himself. The great-uncle murdered in 1318 was Thomas, and it is probable that Queen Thomais got her name to honor his memory.

To be more specific, basilissa Thomais' parents were Ioannes II Doukas Komnenos Angelos Orsini, sovereign of Epeiros and Aitolia, count palatine of Kephallenia, and Anna Komnene Palaiologina Angelina, regent of Epeiros. Thomais, born in the early 1330s, was but a little child when her father, the ruler Ioannes, was poisoned. Her mother, Anna, after allegedly poisoning her husband, became regent of Epeiros for the young Nikephoros II, brother of Thomais, son of Ioannes and Anna.

The evil Andronikos III, Emperor of Constantinople, reasserted direct control of Constantinople over Northern Greece, including their realm of Epeiros. Thomais' family was evicted from their own land in 1339. Thomais' mother, the former Regent Anna, was kept in prison in Constantinople 1342...1349, after being expelled from Epeiros.

However, within a few years, the Constantinopolitan empire experienced a civil war. At which opportunity, their neighbor, the mighty Tsar Dushan, in other words, Stefan Urosh IV Dushan, tsar of Serbia and Macedonia, conquered provinces of Northern Greece in 1346..1348 from Constantinople whose internecine rivals had destabilized the entire Roman Empire of the East and were not able to defend the territory when they were too busy to battle their civil war. In 1348 Tsar Dushan appointed his younger half-brother, the half-Greek Symeon Oureses Palaiologos (in Serbian, 'Simeon Urosh Paleolog Nemanjic'), nicknamed 'Sinisha', as governor of the provinces of Akarnania and southern Epeiros in the occupied Northern Greece.

The new governor, despotes Symeon decided to marry Thomais, the daughter of the former rulers of Epeiros - to consolidate his position in relation to the local aristocracy. They started to have children, Within a few years, their eldest son, Ioannes Oureses Doukas Palaiologos (the future Tsar and monk) and daughter Maria Ouresina Doukaina Palaiologina (the future chatelaine of Ioannina) were already growing.

Meanwhile, Thomais' deposed brother Nikephoros was living in Constantinople where he had supported Ioannes VI Kantakouzenos in the civil war about the throne of Constantinople against Ioannes V Palaiologos. Titled panhypersébastos, then despotes, Nikephoros had married in Summer 1342 Maria Kantakouzene Asanina, a daughter of Ioannes VI, Emperor of Constantinople. Nikephoros was Governor of island of Ainos and the towns on the Hellespontos between 1351 and 1355.

In 1355 the despotes Symeon took an initiative and started a rebellion against his overlord and brother, Tsar Dushan. In December 1355 at Devol, tsar Dushan died a natural death while in Albania warring against mountain tribes. At this moment Symeon was no longer an outright rebel but a dynast with an arguable claim to the throne of Tsar according to the Slavic tradition of brothers succeeding before sons. However, Tsar Dushan had already had his son, Stefan VIII Urosh V crowned and the young man was his direct heir.

In 1355, Thomais' mother, the middle-aged former Regent Anna married anew. Her new husband was despotes Ioannes Komnenos Asanes, a Bulgarian princeling, whom Tsar Dushan had set as vassal lord of Vlorë and Kaninë in southern Albania, an area historically held by rulers of Epeiros and now in immediate neighborhood of Symeon and Thomais' domains.

Tsar Dushan's death in 1355 had left Symeon in a good position to claim more.

However, in the year of Dushan's death in 1355, Thomais' brother Nikephoros II, the deposed ruler of Epeiros, reappeared in Northern Greece wanting to restore himself to the rule of his their ancestral Epeiros. Shortly after the death of the Serbian governor of Thessalia, Gregorios Prealimpos, Nikephoros gained the support of the nobility in Thessalia and Epeiros. In 1356 Nikephoros entered Epeiros and forced Symeon to flee from Akarnania to Kastoria, one of his strongholds in Macedonia. This threw a wrench in the way of Symeon.

In Kastoria, Symeon anyway had in 1356 himself proclaimed as King, as tsar "of Serbs and Greeks" in the place of his young nephew in the North, in the homeland of Serbia.

Now basilissa Thomais was the wife of tsar Symeon, king of the Serbs, later to turn out as king of Thessalia, Macedonia, Epeiros. The Historia Epiri records that, when Symeon retreated to Kastoria, he left "Thomaim…cum duobus liberis…alter puer, altera…puella" (Thomais and their two children, a boy and a girl) there. This was recorded in 1358 when they did not (yet) have more children.

Tsar Symeon attempted more: he launched a war campaign to take over in Serbian homeland too. However, nobility of the Serbian homeland held a council in April 1357 at Skopje, in which they vowed to support Tsar Urosh V, in accordance with Tsar Dushan's will. Symeon's war expedition did not bring more success. In the summer of 1358, Tsar Symeon advanced on Zeta but was stopped at Skutari, where his army of 5000 men was defeated by the Serbian nobility. Tsar Symeon returned to Kastoria, and never again tried to acquire Serbia itself. Although Symeon's control was sometimes tenuous, since his half-brother's death in 1355 Tsar Symeon ruled in the newly-conquered southern portion of the Serbian Empire, and made himself Tsar there: tsar in Macedonia. He was ruler or overlord of regions in Northern Greece, such as of Thessalia, Macedonia, Epeiros, Akarnania, and in Slavic Macedonia. Because Tsar Symeon was not able to take power in Serbia proper, he was a force in the dissolution of the short-lived Serbian Empire into several smaller states, of which their family's Thessalia was one.

In the summer 1359, Thomais' brother Nikephoros II was killed - a follow-up of her family's decades-long habit of dying violently and dramatically. He had made some sort of preliminaries of reconciliation with Symeon. The administration of Constantinople, instead of local ruler of Epeiros, with its incompetence (civil war) had in the 1340s in practical terms released Albanian tribes to take power in various parts of Epeiros. The conquests of Tsar Dushan had in practice further added to possibilities of the Albanian clans. Nikephoros had 'inherited' the Albanian problem in Epeiros. Albanians of Epeiros rebelled against him in 1358 after Nikephoros repudiated his wife Maria Kantakouzene, which was a convenient pretext for Albanians to test their opportunities to expand at the expense of the ruler. In the little skirmish ('battle') of Akheloos, in Aitolia, Nikephoros was defeated by Albanians, and killed in the fight. So lost Thomais his brother and became the heiress of her own dynasty.

Tsar Symeon established their court at Trikkala, in Thessalia. In 1366 at latest, tsar Symeon proclaimed their eldest son Ioannes Oureses Doukas Palaiologos as Joint Tsar with himself. (The young Ioannes may have been associated on the throne by his father as early as 1359/60.) The young Ioannes was however exceedingly religious. Tsar Symeon died sometime between 1369 and 1371.

Their court at Trikkala imitated the Byzantine court. In Trikala tsar Symeon and later tsar Ioannes presided over a court including Greek, Serbian, and Albanian nobles, but they showed preference for the Greek. Symeon founded and generously endowed the monasteries of Meteora.

It is not known when basilissa Thomais deceased.

It is thought that descent from the queen Thomais continues to the present day through her granddaughter Helena Ouresina Palaiologina.