Demetrius Rhodocanakis

Demetrius Rhodocanakis (Dēmētrios Rhodokanakēs; 3 December 1840 – 2 September 1902) was a London-based 19th-century Greek merchant, forger and pretender. Demetrius was the last great Byzantine pretender, claiming to be a prince directly descended from the Palaiologos dynasty of the Byzantine Empire from the 1860s onwards, and then the rightful Emperor of Constantinople, as Demetrios II Dukas Angelos Komnenos Palaiologos Rhodokanakis, from 1895 to his death. Though he lost support after 1895 due to his claims of Byzantine descent having been exposed as forgeries, Demetrius was at one point widely recognized as a Byzantine prince, achieving the recognition of not only the British Foreign Office, but also Pope Pius IX. Demetrius' claim to represent Byzantine royalty rested on a claimed connection between the Rhodocanakis family and the ancient Byzantine Doukas family, as well as on one of his supposed ancestors, also named Demetrius Rhodocanakis, having married a daughter of Theodore Paleologus, a possible descendant of the Palaiologos emperors. Demetrius maintained his claims even after he had been widely discredited, and at some points succeeded in enforcing recognition. Both his 1895 marriage registration and his 1902 death certificate style him as a Byzantine prince. In addition to his pretensions, Demetrius is also remembered as a bibliophile and book collector as well as an important figure in the history of freemasonry in Greece. Demetrius Rhodocanakis was born in Ermoupoli on the Greek island of Syros on 3 December 1840. He was the son of Ioannes Rhodokanakis (born 23 May 1812), a merchant, and a woman by the name of Arieta Koressi. Their family is noted as having been relatively rich, and it was part of the socio-economic elite of Ermoupoli. Before he began his claims and pretensions in the 1860s, Demetrius rendered his name as Dimitrios Rhodokanachi. As part of his later pretensions, Demetrius later claimed that his family descended from the Doukas family, a prominent Byzantine noble family which produced a dynasty of emperors that ruled the empire from 1059 to 1078.