Andronikos IV Paleologos was a prince and emperor of those who contributed the most to the definitive collapse of Byzantine power. He was the first son of the emperor John V Palaiologos, a not particularly charismatic ruler.
Andronikos was born in 1348 and was proclaimed co-emperor in 1352 at the age of only four. In 1369 during his father's absence he took over as regent. John V had decided to go to Hungary and Italy to ask for help against the Turks.
During his passage to Hungary, John was detained in Bulgaria. Andronikos did not do much for the release of his father , which was finally released with the intervention of the Count of Savoy Amadeus VI.
John also went to Venice to which the Byzantine state owed large sums. There was no money and John proposed to the Venetians, in exchange for debts and six warships, to grant them the island of Tenedo. The empire had reached such a collapse.
The Venetians agreed. But the one who refused to honor the emperor's agreement was their son Andronikos. After this the emperor was detained by the Venetians because of the debts! Andronikos also refused to raise money for his father's release, hoping to remain emperor himself...
Only thanks to the intervention of his other son Manuel (later emperor Manuel II) were the Venetians convinced to release the humiliated emperor. John V only returned to Constantinople in 1371. In 1373 he was forced to become a tax subject of the Turks. Andronikos, using this as a pretext, rebelled against his father by allying himself with the son of Sultan Murat.
Both princes were captured and blinded. But Andronikos, by order of his father, was not completely blinded. Andronikos remained a prisoner until 1376 when, with the help of the Genoese, he escaped and took refuge with the Turkish sultan Murat.
Giving Murat the strategically important peninsula of Gallipoli which had only been recovered for the Byzantines by Amadeus of Savoy in 1366 and Tenedo to the Genoese, the wretched Andronikos became emperor in the ruins of the Byzantine state, imprisoning his father and brother of Manuel.
At the head of the Turks, Andronikos entered Constantinople "triumphantly" in 1376. His reign lasted about three years, when John and Manuel escaped with the help of the Venetians and dethroned him. The traitor Andronikos fled to the Genoese, in Galata opposite the City, where he remained until 1381.
But then he was pardoned, instead of being executed in an exemplary manner, by the lazy John V, who according to Michael Doukas was only interested in women. John even granted Andronikos the city of Silyvria as his personal fiefdom.
This wretch rebelled again, in 1385, but he did not have time to harm the state any more as he died in the spring of that year. It is worth noting that his son, John VII, followed exactly in his father's footsteps by briefly winning the Byzantine throne with the support of the Turkish Sultan Bayezid.