Kira Maria (), or only Maria, was a

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

n empress consort, first wife of

Ivan Shishman Ivan Shishman of Bulgaria () ruled as emperor (tsar) of Bulgaria in Tarnovo from 1371 to 3 June 1395. The authority of Ivan Shishman was limited to the central parts of the Bulgarian Empire. In the wake of the death of Ivan Alexander of Bulgari ...

(r. 1371–1395). There are almost no historical sources about her. Her name is mentioned in the ''Boril obituary'' in the following manner: The interpretation of the cited extract is not certain. It is possible that Maria and Kira Maria were two different women. It is known that Ivan Shishman had a second wife - Dragana, daughter of Prince

Lazar of Serbia Lazar Hrebeljanović ( sr-Cyrl, Лазар Хребељановић; – 15 June 1389) was a medieval Serbian ruler who created the largest and most powerful state on the territory of the disintegrated Serbian Empire. Lazar's state, referre ...

and Milica. Prince Lazar did not have a wife called Desislava and therefore it is possible that the name of the emperor's first wife was only Maria, while Dragana could have been called Kira Maria, unless there was a mistake in the paragraph and the places of the two empresses were changed. Another possibility is that the two names were of one person, the first wife of the emperor, mentioned once as ''Kira Maria'' and then as ''Maria''. That option, however, raises the question why is the name of the second wife of Ivan Shishman omitted. It has been suggested that Kira Maria descended by an important noble family from the capital

Tarnovo Veliko Tarnovo (, ; "Great Tarnovo") is a city in north central Bulgaria and the administrative centre of Veliko Tarnovo Province. It is the historical and spiritual capital of Bulgaria. Often referred to as the "''City of the Tsars''", Velik ...

. The names of children produced by the first marriage of Ivan Shishman are unknown. He had two sons

Alexander Alexander () is a male name of Greek origin. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here ar ...

and

Fruzhin Fruzhin (; also transliterated ''Fružin'' or ''Frujin''; died ) was a 15th-century Bulgarian noble who fought actively against the Ottoman conquest of the Second Bulgarian Empire. A son of one of the last Bulgarian tsars, Ivan Shishman of the ...

but it is unknown from by wife they were born. It is likely that he had other children that died in their infancy and were mentioned in the ''Boril obituary''.

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kira Maria Bulgarian consorts Year of birth unknown 1380s deaths 14th-century births 14th-century Bulgarian women 14th-century Bulgarian people