Za Dengel’s religious conversion leads to Za Sellase not only withdrawing his support, but actively working against him and stirring up a revolt in Gojjam.

Za Dengel marches to the plain of Bartcho to put down this revolt, but despite the help of two hundred Portuguese musketeers ,Za Dengel perishes in battle on October 24.

According to James Bruce, Za Dengel's corpse lay unclaimed on the battlefield for three days, until some peasants buried it "in a little building, like a chapel (which I have seen), not above six feet high, under the shade of a very fine tree, in Abyssinia called sassa."

The body will be reinterred ten years later in Daga Estifanos monastery on Daga Island in Lake Tana.

When Susyenos was a boy, a group of marauding Oromo had captured him and his father, Abeto (Prince) Fasilides, a grandson of Dawit II; holding them captive for over a year until they were rescued by the Dejazmach Assebo.

Upon his rescue, he had gone to live with Queen Admas Mogasa, the widow of Emperor Mena and mother of Sarsa Dengel, nəgusä nägäst from 1563 to 1597.

Susenyos in the 1590s had been perceived as a potential successor to the throne, as Emperor Sarsa Dengel's sons were very young.

Empress Maryam Sena, in order to eliminate Susenyos from the competition, had had him exiled, but Susenyos had managed to escape and find refuge among his former captors, the Oromo.

At the death of his one-time ally, Emperor Za Dengel, Susenyos is proclaimed his successor and returns to the realm, although the fight against Emperor Yaqob continues.