born March 25, 1297, Constantinople
died June 15, 1341, Constantinople
Byzantine emperor (132841).
He forced his grandfather Andronicus II Palaeologus to make him coemperor (1325) and then to abdicate (1328). He relied on John VI Cantacuzenus to reform the courts and rebuild the imperial navy. He ceded control of Macedonia to Serbia (1334) and lost land to the Ottoman Turks in Anatolia, but he regained some Aegean islands from the Genoese and reasserted control of Epirus and Thessaly.