The fall of Adrianople to Turkish troops has shocked the several Serbian factions into briefly uniting under Vukashin, the king of the southern Serbian lands, and a member of the powerful Macedonian family allied to that of Balshic, which rules in northern Albania and along the Adriatic, and …

… his brother John Ugljesha, the despot of Serres (modern Sérrai, Greece); the Slavic Christian states of the Balkans form an alliance to drive Murad back.

The death of Dushan in 1355 has left his successors too divided and weak to defeat the Ottomans, however, despite an alliance with King Louis of Hungary and Tsar Ivan Alexander Shishman of Bulgaria in what is to be the first European crusade against the Ottomans.

The Balsic family, in the power vacuum created in the southwestern Balkans with the death of Serbian monarch Stefan Dushan, has established a new power center along the Adriatic near Lake Scutari, reviving the eleventh-century kingdom of Doclea, now known as Zeta, and in 1371 declares it an independent principality.

Đurađ, the eldest of the three sons of Balša I, announces to the Republic of Ragusa that he, Vukašin Mrnjavčević and his son, Marko, along with their armies, are in Scutari, preparing an attack on Nikola Altomanović.

Ragusa assists their campaign by providing ships to transport men and supplies, since their campaign is in Ragusa's interest.

However, the campaign never takes place, as Vukašin and Marko go to aid Vukašin's brother, Jovan Uglješa, in a campaign against the Turks, which ends in total disaster, Vukašin and Uglješa and their army being wiped out in the Battle of Maritsa.