Stefan Uroš IV who is mostly known as Stefan Dušan is born in 1308. He was the eldest son of Stefan Uroš III and Theodora of Bulgaria, daughter of the Bulgarian king Smilets. While he was still a boy, his father rebelled against his own father, Stefan Uroš II Milutin, but he was captured and in 1314 exiled to Constantinople. Stefan Dušan stayed with his father till 1320. Byzantines capital had a big influence on the formation of his character. In this period he became familiar with the ways of government in Byzantine that would guide him latter. Although Stefan Uroš III was blinded before he was send in exile, after the return of the family back in Serbia in 1320, and after the death of Stefan Uroš II in 1321 he claimed that he was not blind and claimed a miraculous cure. In 1322 he was crowned a king, and Stefan Dušan was crowned young king, successor.
King Stefan Dušan
He was more a soldier then a diplomat. In 1326 he lost Hum (Harzegovina) to the Bosnian ruler, but in 1329 he defeated the Bosnian ban Stjepan Kotromanic, and later in 1330 defeated the Bulgarians at Velbužd. After the battle, Dušan rebelled against his father and overthrew him from the throne and crowned himself a king in 1331. He married Helena of Bulgaria, sister of Ivan Alexander, woman that had big influence on him, but kept the relations with Bulgaria untroubled till the death of Dušan.
In 1334 he started a war with Byzantine, taking border fortresses and latter invading Byzantine territory, reaching Salonica. In August 1334 he made peace with the emperor Andronicus III Palaeologus. His territories extended close to modern Greek northern border, and the next year he prevented a Hungarian invasion securing his borders.
Emperor Stefan Dušan
Dušan used the civil war in Byzantine that broke out after the death of Andronicus III in 1341. He allied with John Cantacuzenus who was fighting with Anna of Savoy over who is going to be the new regent of the young emperor John V Palaeologus. Dušan started an offensive in 1342 conquering most of Macedonia and Albania, reaching as far as Kavala. In 1345 he proclaimed him self Tsar in Serres, and latter on 16 April 1346 he was crowned as Tsar of the Serbs and Greeks, by the Archbishop of Ohrid Nicholas, the newly created Serbian patriarch Joanikie II and Bulgarian patriarch Simeon.
Byzantine, of course, didn’t approve this, but seeing they could not deal with Dušans aggression on their own they sought allies in the Turks. In 1348 Dušan conquered Thessaly and Epirus. After recognizing the danger of the Turks in the Balkan, started getting ready to push them back, but Hungarians attacked Serbia, so he had to defend his northern border again. He defeated the Hungarian king Charles I of Hungary, but did not take offensive maneuvers against them, since he wanted the help from the pope for organizing a crusade against the Turks with him as a leader. He again battle the Hungarians in 1350, who wished to regain Zahumlje. In 1349 and 1354 he promulgated a code containing more than 200 statutes. The code, named as Dušan’s Code, covered mainly criminal law and the relations between the classes.
Dušan died in December 1355. He was buried in the Monastery of the Holy Archangels in Prizren. Today his remains are in the church of Saint Mark in Belgrade. He was succeeded by his sun Uroš V, who was unable to preserve the large empire.