The last Byzantine emperor's nephew signed his imperial rights over to the King of France in 1494 for 4,400 ducats a year

Andreas Palaiologos was born in 1453, the year his uncle Constantine XI, the last Byzantine emperor, died when the Ottomans took Constantinople. His father Thomas, despot of the Morea, fled to Corfu and then Rome, where he died in May 1465. Cardinal Bessarion took charge of the children. His sister Zoe married Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow in June 1472 under the name Sophia. The papacy paid the brothers a pension. The papacy cut the pension again and again. In 1476^† his younger brother Manuel left Rome for Constantinople, where Gibbon says the sultan kept him "in safety and ease" and his surviving son became a Muslim. From the 1480s Andreas styled himself Emperor of Constantinople and used a seal with a double-headed eagle. In September 1494 he ceded to Charles VIII of France all his rights to the thrones of Constantinople, Trebizond and Serbia. Charles was to pay him 4,400 ducats a year, give him a guard of 100 horsemen, press the pope to restore his old pension, and retake the Morea for him to hold as a fief for one saddled white horse a year. Charles died in 1498 without fighting the Ottomans. In a testament dated 7 April 1502 Andreas transferred the same rights to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The historian A. A. Vasiliev wrote that it had no practical result. Andreas died in June 1502. The pope gave his widow funeral money, and he was buried beside his father in St Peter's.