Andronikos IV predeceases his father, and his own son seizes Constantinople and the throne, as John VII, but the Turks again help Manuel and John regain it.

Manuel has been forced to live at the court of Bayezid as a submissive vassal, remaining there until his escape to Constantinople after learning of his father's death on February 16, 1391.

The forty-one-year-old Manuel has inherited an impoverished empire greatly reduced in size and strength, a Turkish overlord, and a frightened populace.

Ottoman forces have conducted campaigns that have succeeded in controlling vast Balkan territories, but Venetian advances in Greece, Albania, and imperial lands, together with the extension of Hungarian influence in Wallachia and Danubian Bulgaria, compel Bayezid to blockade Constantinople from 1391.