Kantakouzenos, who directs both domestic and foreign…

Kantakouzenos, who directs both domestic and foreign policy for the Emperor, has encouraged a reform of the law courts and promoted commercial independence from the Genoese and Venetians by initiating a large shipbuilding project.

Emperor Andronikos has suffered losses to the Ottoman Turks in Anatolia; but he has managed to regain the islands of Chios, Phocaea, and Lesbos from the Genoese with the aid of the rebuilt navy, and has reasserted imperial control over the long-separated provinces of Epirus and Thessaly.

At the Emperor's death on June 15, 1341, Kantakouzenos asserts his claim as regent for the ten-year-old John V. However, when Kantakouzenos leaves Constantinople to battle the Serbs in Thrace, his political rivals—led by his former partisan Alexius Apocaucus, the patriarch John Kalekas, and the empress mother Anna of Savoy, who holds power in Constantinople—declare him a traitor and imprison his supporters.