Maria Zaccaria

Maria II Zaccaria Asanina (14th century – after 1404) was a Princess of Achaea.

She was daughter of Centurione I Zaccaria, Baron of Damala, Chalandritsa, Estamira and of Asenina, his Byzantine wife, daughter of Andronikos Asen.

Asenina was a sister of the Byzantine Empress Irene Asanina. Through her mother Maria descended from the imperial families of the Palaiologoi, Komnenoi, Angeloi. She married Pedro de San Superano the leader of the Navarrese Company from the year 1386 and the de facto ruler of Morea until 1402. After Pedro's death, Maria ruled the Principality as Princess in her own right for 2 years until her son coming to age.

Once she assumed power Maria appointed her ambitious nephew Centurione II Zaccaria -son of her brother Andronikos- as her bailee, a choice that ended up being the undoing of her reign. In the past Pedro had promised to the King of Naples Ladislaus 3.000 ducats in exchange for the title of the ruler of Morea, an amount of coins that he never paid. Ladislaus renewed his demands by asking Maria to bestow him the ducats immediately, something that also Maria didn't favored. Centurione acted secretly and dispatched a trusted person in Naples to inform Ladislaus that Maria and her children couldn't grant him the money but he himself was eager to pay them as long as he was recognized the only ruler of the Principality. Ladislaus accepted the unexpected offer of Centurione and declared the fall of Maria and her offsprings from the throne of Achaea.

In order to justify his decision, he argued that Maria and her son demonstrated a punishable audacity by not renewing the feudal oath of the Princes of Achaea to Naples. After her fall, Maria disappears from the historical record. During her brief reign, based on her epistolography it seems that Maria was residing at the city of Patras, where we see her holding discussions with Venice about the appointment of a Venetian prelate.