Background
Born Thomais Komnene Angelina in the early 1330s, she lost her father John II Orsini in 1335, when he was poisoned, allegedly by his wife, Anna Palaiologina, a scion of the ruling Palaiologos dynasty of the Byzantine Empire.
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Thomais Orsini
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Soon, however, in 1338, the Orsini were evicted from Epirus by the Byzantine emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos, who annexed Epirus to the Byzantine Empire. Nevertheless, during the destructive Byzantine civil war that followed Andronikos III"s death in 1341, most of the remaining Byzantine territories, including Epirus and Thessaly, fell to the forces of the Serbian ruler Stephen IV Dušan, who in 1346 founded the Serbian Empire. In 1348, Dušan appointed his younger half-brother, the half-Greek Simeon Uroš Palaiologos, as governor of Acarnania and the southern parts of Epirus.
