Kira Maria
Encyclopedia
Kira Maria or only Maria, was a Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

n empress consort, first wife of Ivan Shishman
Ivan Shishman of Bulgaria
Ivan Shishman ruled as emperor of Bulgaria in Tarnovo from 1371 to 3 July 1395. The authority of Ivan Shishman was limited to the central parts of the Bulgarian Empire. His indecisive and inconsistent policy did little to prevent the fall of his country under Ottoman rule. In 1393 the Ottoman...

 (r. 1371–1395). There are almost no historical sources about her. Her name is mentioned in the Boril obituary in the following manner:
The interpretation of the cited extract is not certain. It is possible that Maria and Kira Maria were two different women. It is known that Ivan Shishman had a second wife - Dragana
Dragana of Serbia
Dragana was a Bulgarian empress consort, second wife of Ivan Shishman . She was a daughter of the Serbian prince Lazar and Milica Nemanjić. There are almost no historical sources about her. There is a text in the Boril obituary concerning the consorts of Ivan Shishman:Based on that text, the...

, daughter of Prince Lazar of Serbia
Lazar of Serbia
Lazar Hrebeljanović , was a medieval nobleman that emerged as the most powerful Serbian ruler after the death of the previous, childless, Emperor Uroš the Weak, which resulted in years of instability in the Serbian realm. As Stefan Lazar, he was Prince of Serbia from 1371 to 1389, ruling what is...

 and Milica. Prince Lazar did not have a wife called Desislava and therefore it is possible that the name of the emperor's first wife was only Maria, while Dragana could have been called Kira Maria, unless there was a mistake in the paragraph and the places of the two empresses were changed.

Another possibility is that the two names were of one person, the first wife of the emperor, mentioned once as Kira Maria and then as Maria. That option, however, raises the question why is the name of the second wife of Ivan Shishman omitted.

It has been suggested that Kira Maria descended by an important noble family from the capital Tarnovo
Veliko Tarnovo
Veliko Tarnovo is a city in north central Bulgaria and the administrative centre of Veliko Tarnovo Province. Often referred to as the "City of the Tsars", Veliko Tarnovo is located on the Yantra River and is famous as the historical capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire, attracting many tourists...

. The names of children produced by the first marriage of Ivan Shishman are unknown. He had three sons Alexander
Alexander (son of Ivan Shishman)
Alexander , subsequently Iskender , was the eldest son of Bulgarian tsar Ivan Shishman . Alexander was possibly made co-emperor by his father before the Ottoman conquest of the Tarnovo Tsardom in 1395. After the subjugation of Ivan Shishman's realm and his execution, Alexander converted to Islam...

, Asen and Fruzhin
Fruzhin
Fruzhin was a 15th-century Bulgarian noble who fought actively against the Ottoman conquest of the Second Bulgarian Empire. A son of one of the last Bulgarian tsars, Ivan Shishman of the Tarnovo Tsardom, Fruzhin co-organized the so-called Uprising of Konstantin and Fruzhin along with Constantine...

 but it is unknown from by wife they were born. It is likely that he had other children that died in their infancy and were mentioned in the Boril obituary.

Footnotes

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