Medieval Serbia's mightiest ruler seized the crown from his own father
In 1331 the young prince Stefan Dusan marched on his father, besieged him, captured the royal treasury and had him imprisoned, then took the throne. Over the next two decades he built an empire stretching from the Danube to the Gulf of Corinth and crowned himself emperor of Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians and Albanians.
Dusan's childhood was shaped by family feuds. In 1314 his grandfather, King Stefan Milutin, quarrelled with Dusan's father, Stefan Decanski, and sent him to Constantinople to be blinded, though the blinding was never complete. The family lived in the Byzantine capital until 1320, where Dusan absorbed Byzantine customs and learned Greek. His birth year is disputed; traditionally put around 1308, some Serbian historians now argue for 1312. After Milutin's death in 1321, Decanski won a civil war against rival claimants and was crowned in 1322, with Dusan named 'young king'.
The son proved a formidable soldier, defeating Bosnian forces in 1329 and the Bulgarian emperor Michael III Shishman at the Battle of Velbuzhd in 1330. When Decanski declined to follow up by attacking Byzantium, nobles eager to expand southward grew restless. Father and son clashed, made a brief peace, then fought again. Decanski surrendered on 21 August 1331, and Dusan was crowned king in early September.
His conquests made Serbia the strongest state in Southeast Europe: an Orthodox, multilingual empire with its capital at Skopje. In 1346 he took the imperial title. He issued a legal code known as Dusan's Code, perhaps medieval Serbia's most important written work, raised the Serbian Church from archbishopric to patriarchate, and completed his father's mausoleum at Visoki Decani, now a UNESCO site. Under his rule the country reached its territorial, economic and cultural high point.
Dusan was trying to build an alliance with Venice against the advancing Ottoman Turks when he died suddenly at his court in Prizren on 20 December 1355. The empire weakened rapidly, and after his son Stefan Uros V died it fractured into separate states, a collapse remembered as the Fall of the Serbian Empire. His remains, first buried near Prizren, now rest in the Church of Saint Mark in Belgrade.
Source: Stefan Dušan
