Michael was dethroned and, together with his mother Maria (who was pregnant by Ivailo), was surrendered to the Byzantines and sent into captivity in the Byzantine Empire, perhaps at Adrianople;Fine 1987: 197 the scene is related with glee by the Byzantine poet Manuel Philes, who describes the captive empress and her son as a lioness and her lion cub.Andreev et al. 2012: 475; Božilov 1985: 118; Zlatarski 1940: 566. Michael reappears on the pages of history only about 1302/3, when a faction of the Bulgarian nobility invited him to recover his throne from Theodore Svetoslav. Although provided with Byzantine military support, Michael proved unable to assert himself in Bulgaria, and is said to have "wandered about outside Tărnovo."Božilov 1985: 118-119; Fine 1987: 229. This attempt to recover the Bulgarian throne is associated with a poorly preserved rock inscription from the cave monasteries by the village of Royak, naming "the porphyrogennetos emperor Michael."Andreev 1994; Andreev et al. 2012: 476. His subsequent fate and the date of his death are unknown.Andreev et al. 2012: 476; Božilov 1985: 119.
