Medieval genealogies were written with the intention to present specific family’s or person’s origin. They illustrate the need to legitimize their hold onto power or the aim to acquire it and to prove that achieved or desired authority is legal. This paper explores their use in the political life of late medieval Serbian lands. The case in question are the ones that promote provenance of the wife of prince Lazar, Milica, as a descent of the prince Vukan, the eldest son of the first Serbian ruler-saint, Stefan Nemanja. The analysis is conducted by comparing all of the sources that give information about Milica’s ancestry. Тhe research had shown that this news could be divided into two groups: the one where unspecified kinship with Nemanjić dynasty
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This political and unconventional hagiography is marked by rewriting and reinterpretation of the certain parts of despot’s life. With the questionable approach to past, the author paints a genealogy of despot Stefan. Emperor Constantin the Great becomes an ancestor of Nemanjić dynasty and, through lineage Vukan-Milica, of despot himself. This falsified genealogy belongs to the type of laics genealogies, texts saturated with the ideological attitudes and loose attach to the historical truth. Even though the main branch of Nemanjić rulers is listed correctly, it is not possible to accept the lineage in question without confirmation from other sources. Yet, the other sources do not confirm it. Later on, the lineage is often distorted and the aim to unite all the prominent figures of medieval times in a single family tree is quite noticeable. Consequently, genealogies become filled with the further fabrications. They are interpolated in other historiographical genres, one stemma-chronicle from XVIth and chronicles from XVIth and XVIIth century.
In the end, although the lineage Vukan-Milica should not be accepted from the methodological point of view, with the current state of sources it is not possible to offer an alternative version of family relations between the princess and Nemanjić dynasty. It could be argued that the very success of the
This political and unconventional hagiography is marked by rewriting and reinterpretation of the certain parts of despot’s life. With the questionable approach to past, the author paints a genealogy of despot Stefan. Emperor Constantin the Great becomes an ancestor of Nemanjić dynasty and, through lineage Vukan-Milica, of despot himself. This falsified genealogy belongs to the type of laics genealogies, texts saturated with the ideological attitudes and loose attach to the historical truth. Even though the main branch of Nemanjić rulers is listed correctly, it is not possible to accept the lineage in question without confirmation from other sources. Yet, the other sources do not confirm it. Later on, the lineage is often distorted and the aim to unite all the prominent figures of medieval times in a single family tree is quite noticeable. Consequently, genealogies become filled with the further fabrications. They are interpolated in other historiographical genres, one stemma-chronicle from XVIth and chronicles from XVIth and XVIIth century.
In the end, although the lineage Vukan-Milica should not be accepted from the methodological point of view, with the current state of sources it is not possible to offer an alternative version of family relations between the princess and Nemanjić dynasty. It could be argued that the very success of the