Principality of Valona

The Principality of Valona and Kanina, also styled Despotate, was the Albanian lordship of the Vlorë coast, a chief Byzantine holding, a Serbian Empire fief turned free and independent state from 1346 to the Ottoman conquest in 1417. The strategic port, old Byzantine prize, had been fought over by Byzantines and Italians all through the thirteenth century; Dušan took it in late 1345 or early 1346, some scholars say 1337, and set his brother-in-law John Asen, the Bulgarian tsar's brother, to rule from Valona town with Kanina and Berat as his main rock fortresses in today's Vlorë, Fier and Berat, John's writ uncertain beyond. After 1355 the lordship stood alone and proud under Venice's very long shadow, trading between Latin lords and Slav emperors while the Turks gathered in the wild Balkan shore. In 1417 the Ottomans took it, and the seventy-year principality entered the centuries of Ottoman Albania.