The Duchy of Athens was one of the Crusader states set up in Greece after the conquest of the Byzantine Empire during the Fourth Crusade as part of the process known as Frankokratia, encompassing the regions of Attica and Boeotia, and surviving until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century.
During the late Middle Ages, the two cities of Argos and Nauplia formed a lordship within the Frankish-ruled Morea in southern Greece.
The Duchy of Neopatras was a principality in southern Thessaly, established in 1319. Officially part of the Kingdom of Sicily, itself part of the Crown of Aragon, the duchy was governed in conjunction with the neighbouring Duchy of Athens, it enjoyed a large degree of self-government. From the mid-14th century, the duchies entered a period of decline: most of the Thessalian possessions were lost to the Serbian Empire, internal dissensions arose, along with the menace of Turkish piracy in the Aegean and the onset of Ottoman expansion in the Balkans. Enfeebled, the Catalan possessions were taken over by the Florentine adventurer Nerio I Acciaioli in 1385–1390. The title of Duke of Neopatras was held by the heir of the King of Sicily.
Nerio I Acciaioli or Acciajuoli was the de facto Duke of Athens from 1385 to 1388, after which he reigned uncontested until his death in 1394. Born to a family of Florentine bankers, he became the principal agent of his influential kinsman, Niccolò Acciaioli, in Frankish Greece in 1360. He purchased large domains in the Principality of Achaea and administered them independently of the absent princes. He hired mercenaries and conquered Megara, a strategically important fortress in the Duchy of Athens, in 1374 or 1375. His troops again invaded the duchy in 1385. The Catalans who remained loyal to King Peter IV of Aragon could only keep the Acropolis of Athens, but they were also forced into surrender in 1388.
Nerio II Acciaioli (1416–1451) was the Duke of Athens on two separate occasions from 1435 to 1439 and again from 1441 to 1451.
Chiara Zorzi or Giorgio, also Clara or Claire, was duchess consort of Athens by marriage to Nerio II Acciaioli, Duke of Athens, and regent of Athens during the minority of her son Francesco I from 1451 until 1454.
Bartolomeo Contarini was a Venetian businessman who married the widowed duchess of Athens Chiara Zorzi in 1453 and governed the duchy in the name of her infant son, Francesco I.
Nicholas ΙΙΙ Zorzi or Giorgi was the Marquess of Bodonitsa, a member of the Zorzi family of the Republic of Venice, from 1416 to 1436, though the title was purely nominal by then. Before becoming marquess in an exchange with his nephew Nicholas II, he was the baron of Carystus. He was a son of Guglielma Pallavicini and Marquess Nicholas I Zorzi.
Antonio I Acciaioli, also known as Anthony I Acciaioli or Antonio I Acciajuoli, was Duke of Athens from 1403.
Antonio II Acciaioli was the Duke of Athens from 1439 to 1445.
Amadeus or Amedeo of Savoy was the son of James of Piedmont and his third wife Marguerite de Beaujeu. By James' will of 16 May 1366, he was declared his firstborn and heir. In 1367, he succeeded his father in his titles of Lord of Piedmont and Prince of Achaea. He was also the lord of Pinerolo.
Guglielma Pallavicini, the Lady of Thermopylae, was the last Pallavicino heir to rule in Bodonitsa, in Frankish Greece.
Louis Fadrique a Catalan nobleman who was Count of Salona, as well as lord of various other towns in Central Greece from ca. 1365 until his death in 1382. In 1375–1381 he also served as the vicar-general of the twin duchy of Athens and Neopatras.
Jacob Zorzi was the Marquess of Bodonitsa from 1388 to 1410. He was the last considered true ruler of the Frankish state of Bodonitsa.
Guidobaldo II della Rovere was an Italian condottiero, who succeeded his father Francesco Maria I della Rovere as Duke of Urbino from 1538 until his death in 1574. He was a member of the House of La Rovere. Guidobaldo was an important patron of the arts in general, and of Titian in particular, commissioning his own portrait, and buying Titian's Venus of Urbino.
Angelo Acciaioli was an Italian Roman Catholic bishop from Florence.
Pietro Zeno, was lord of Andros from 1384 until his death in 1427, and a distinguished diplomat in the service of the Republic of Venice.
Turahanoğlu Ömer Bey was an Ottoman general and governor. The son of the famed Turahan Bey, he was active chiefly in southern Greece: he fought in the Morea against both the Byzantines in the 1440s and 1450s and against the Venetians in the 1460s, while in 1456, he conquered the Latin Duchy of Athens. He also fought in Albania, north-east Italy, Wallachia and Anatolia.
Dorotheus I was the Greek Orthodox metropolitan bishop of Athens from c. 1388 to 1392, and the first to reside in the city since 1205.
Francesca Acciaioli or Acciajuoli was the wife of Carlo I Tocco, Count Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos.
