After the death of Andreas Palaiologos, Wackypedia says the throne in pretense went to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Assuming you leave Andreas’ younger brother out of the mix for effectively abdicating, the line should have gone to Serbia through the eldest sister Helena. I also know that Moscow considered itself the Third Rome claiming themselves heir to the Byzantine Empire through the younger sister Zoe’s marriage to Ivan III.
What were the Byzantine rules on inhereting the throne?
Well, who’s to say whether it’s valid or not? The Empire didn’t exist anymore so nobody cared enough to fight over it. I doubt the kings of Spain ever bothered to use the title.
Here’s a funny one, I always remember when one of the owners of the Guinness fortune was one of a dozen pretenders to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Likewise, a worthless title, but I always wished I had millions, and could buy the title, put on a crown, walk into Jerusalem and say, “OK, everybody who can’t play nice together, get out of my kingdom.”
I doubt Byzantine had detailed inheritance laws. Not sure about 15th century, but earlier it was still very Roman: if you can make the soldiers like you, you are the emperor.
Selling the Roman Empire was nothing new. In AD 193 the Praetorian Guard assassinated the Emperor Pertinax and then held an auction for the Imperium, with the highest bidder getting the crown. This turned out to be a rich old Senator, Didius Julianus, who lasted about as long as you’d expect, about three months, roughly the time it took for one of the generals in the provinces, Septimius Severus, to gather his legions, march on Rome, depose and execute Didius and disband the disgraced Praetorians, sending them off to the remote bogs of Germany or somewhere equally distant and unpleasant.
But the difference is that many Roman emperors did not have heirs unless they adopted someone in part because women could not be Empress. There were heirs to Andreas with Helena’s line and Zoe’s (Sophia’s) line. Although the Pope arranged for the marriage of Zoe as a continuation of the Orthodox line, she was the younger sister and her line died in 1610. Helena’s line had three daughters which continued the Byzantine dynasty.
I thought I made the distinction between Byzantine and Roman emperors. The Byzantines had a rich history of empresses and even though there were no Palaiologos empresses the line goes through them a few times. If the point were not moot by the time Andreas died, I doubt anyone would have had an issue with Helena being the Despot of Morea and Empress of Byzantium in pretense.
