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, encompassing the regions of Attica and Boeotia, and surviving until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century.
Walter V of Brienne was Duke of Athens from 1308 until his death. Being the only son of Hugh of Brienne and Isabella de la Roche, Walter was the sole heir to large estates in France, the Kingdom of Naples and the Peloponnese. He was held in custody in the Sicilian castle of Augusta between 1287 and 1296 or 1297 to secure the payment of his father's ransom to the Aragonese admiral, Roger of Lauria. When his father died fighting against Lauria in 1296, Walter inherited the County of Brienne in France, and the Counties of Lecce and Conversano in southern Italy. He was released, but he was captured during a Neapolitan invasion of Sicily in 1299. His second captivity lasted until the Treaty of Caltabellotta in 1302.
The Duchy of Neopatras was a Catalan-dominated principality in southern Thessaly, established in 1318. Officially part of the Crown of Aragon, the duchy was governed in conjunction with the neighbouring Duchy of Athens by the local Catalan aristocracy, who 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.
Nerio I Acciaioli or Acciajuoli was the actual ruler of the Duchy of Athens from 1385. 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.
Roger Deslaur or Desllor, an almogàver from Roussillon in the service of Walter V of Brienne, Duke of Athens, was one of the few knights to survive the bloody Battle of Halmyros on 15 March 1311. Captured by the Catalan Company, he accepted the post of rector and marshal of the Company after Boniface of Verona declined it.
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.
Manfred, infante of Sicily, was the second son of Frederick III of Sicily and Eleanor of Anjou.
Don Alfonso Fadrique was the eldest and illegitimate son of Frederick II of Sicily. He served as vicar general of the Duchy of Athens from 1317 to 1330.
Antonio I Acciaioli, also known as Anthony I Acciaioli or Antonio I Acciajuoli was Duke of Athens from 1403.
Joanna of Châtillon or Joan, French: Jeanne; was the wife of Walter V of Brienne (1305). She was Duchess of Athens by marriage (1308–1311). She was the daughter of Gaucher V de Châtillon, Constable of France and Isabelle de Dreux. Her paternal grandparents were Gaucher IV de Châtillon and Isabelle de Villehardouin. Her maternal grandparents were Robert de Dreux, Viscount of Chateaudun and Isabelle de Villebéon.
Antonio II Acciaioli was the Duke of Athens from 1439 to 1445.
Francis or Francesco I Acciaioli was the son of Nerio II Acciaioli by his second wife Chiara Zorzi. He succeeded on his father's death in 1451 to the Duchy of Athens under his mother's regency.
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.
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.
Juande Urtubia was a Navarrese royal squire who led first a contingent of fifty men-at-arms on an expedition to recover the Kingdom of Albania (1376–1377) and later a large army against Thebes and Boeotia, which he conquered in 1379.
Marulla of Verona or Maria of Verona, was Lady of Karystos in Frankish Greece in 1318-1326.
Boniface Fadrique was a Catalan nobleman active in Central Greece as lord of Karystos from 1359 until 1365 and then as Count of Salona and owner of various other fiefs in the Duchy of Athens from 1366 until his defeat in a conflict with his nephew Louis Fadrique in the late 1370s.
James Fadrique was a Catalan nobleman who became Count of Salona, as well as lord of various other towns in Central Greece from ca. 1355 until his death in 1366.
Matthew of Moncada was count of Aderno and Agosta, the grand seneschal of the Kingdom of Sicily under Frederick the Simple.
