The House of Palaiologos ruled the Byzantine Empire from 1259 to its fall in 1453, the last of its reigning dynasties. The lineage seems to have continued until the end of the 17th century, and one of its last members is buried on the Caribbean island of Barbados. Born in 1619, Ferdinand Paleologus was the youngest son of Theodore Paleologus, an Italian assassin who had moved to England in the late 16th century, coming from a family that claimed to have descended from the Byzantine dynasty. Ferdinand supported the royalists in the English Civil…
