John VIII Palaiologos

John VIII Palaiologos (18 December 1392 – 29 May 1453) was Roman Emperor from 1423 until his execution in 1453, shortly after the Battle of Constantinople. He succeeded his father, Manuel II, and ordered the deaths of the Conspirators upon taking the throne — failing to kill John of Trebizond's squire, Lucius. 30 years later, after the siege, Lucius would avenge his mentor by killing John on the outskirts of the city, fulfilling the Great Conspiracy.

His reign would be largely characterized by a looming Ottoman threat, which he met by ceding more religious authority to the Catholic Church, hoping to secure protection against the Turks. He also made an expensive deal with the Republic of Venice, being assured that a relief force would arrive in the event of a siege. Despite a union between Orthodox and Catholic Christianity at the Council of Florence in 1439, and an Ottoman civil war in Anatolia, the threat lingered — and in 1453, the Ottomans marched on Constantinople. On the eve of 29 May 1453, John was informed that there would be no Venetian relief force, and famously chose to hide in a barrel until the siege was over. Neither popular among his clergy, nor favored among his people, John was subsequently given up by the city's defenders when Pluto broke the siege, and executed for the death of his mentor.

Although supervising the defense of the city in 1422, and succeeding, John VIII is remembered as an incompetent and cowardly Emperor — choosing to placate his Catholic peers than meet the Ottomans in open battle, as his brother Constantine often advocated and would later accomplish. His death, ironic as it was, heralded the regime of Pluto and the Empire thereafter until Zoe' s ascension in 1480 — an Emperor-less nation remembered as the Byzantine Republic.