Duchy of Athens

The Duchy of Athens was one of the Latin states carved out of the Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade. It covered Attica and Boeotia, with Athens as its capital, and was founded in 1205 by Othon de la Roche, a Burgundian knight who had taken part in the conquest of Constantinople. Initially a vassal of the Kingdom of Thessalonica, the duchy passed after that kingdom's fall under the overlordship of the kings of Sicily. The de la Roche line died out in 1308, and Guy II's cousin Walter of Brienne inherited the title. His refusal to pay the Catalan Company led the mercenaries to seize the duchy in 1311; they acknowledged the king of Sicily and ruled through his nominal dukes, governing from Thebes. In 1388 the Florentine Acciaioli family took Athens, while the Brienne claim passed into the Aragonese and later Spanish royal titles. The duchy survived as a Latin enclave until the Ottoman conquest of 1458, long after the Byzantine recovery of Constantinople.