The Holy Despots — the Household of Branković
The blinded despot Stephen, his wife Angelina who carried his relics through exile, and their sons John and Maximus — a family that lost a country and was glorified for what it kept.
Stephen Branković was blinded as a young hostage at the Ottoman court, ruled Serbia briefly as despot, and spent the rest of his life in exile in Italy, where he married Angelina, a daughter of the Albanian house of Arianiti. After his death she carried his relics with her through years of wandering — to Italy, then to Hungary, then to Srem — until the family was granted lands there, and the sons founded monasteries around the relics they had brought.
Their sons finished what the exile began. John ruled as titular despot in Srem and was remembered for his charity; Maximus, his brother, became a monk and then archbishop, serving in Wallachia and at Krušedol, the monastery the family built. Angelina outlived them all, took the monastic habit, and is remembered in the Serbian Church as Mother Angelina, whose name is still given to girls in Srem.
Few royal households have been glorified entire, and fewer still for what they did with a lost country rather than a held one. The four are commemorated together on December 10.