Keratsa Petritsa

Keratsa Petritsa (Bulgarian: Кераца Петрица) was a Bulgarian noblewoman (bolyarka), sister of tsar Michael Shishman of Bulgaria. Her eldest son Ivan Alexander rose to the Bulgarian throne after vicissitudes of politics.
History
Keratsa was the daughter of the despotēs Shishman of Vidin by an unnamed daughter of the sebastokrator Peter and Anna (Theodora), herself daughter of Ivan Asen II and Irene Komnene of Epirus. She was also a distant cousin of tsar Theodore Svetoslav and tsar George II Terter.
Since the middle of the 13th century, the area of Vidin had been effectively autonomous under ineffective Bulgarian overlordship, and was ruled successively by Yakov Svetoslav (died 1276), Shishman (died between 1308 and 1313), and then the future Michael Asen III. Shishman and his son received the high courtly title of despotēs from their cousin Theodore Svetoslav and, on the childless death of young George Terter II in 1323, the brother...