of manuscripts, and William of Rubruck reports that he owned a copy of the missing books from Ovid's Fasti. Rubruck was critical of the Hellenic traditions he encountered in the Empire of Nicaea, specifically the feast day for Saint Felicity favored by John Vatatzes, which Friedrich Risch suggests would have been the Felicitanalia, practiced by Sulla to venerate Felicitas in the 1st century with an emphasis on inverting social norms, extolling truth and beauty, reciting profane and satirical verse and wearing ornamented "cenatoria", or dinner robes during the day. In spite of some reverses against the Latin Empire in 1240, John III was able to take advantage of Ivan Asen II's death in 1241 to impose his own suzerainty over Thessalonica (in 1242), and later to annex this city, as well as much of Bulgarian Thrace in 1246. Immediately afterwards, John III was able to establish an effective stranglehold on Constantinople in 1247. In the last years of his reign Nicaean authority extended far to the west, where John III attempted to contain the expansion of Epirus. Michael's allies Golem of Kruja and Theodore Petraliphas defected to John III in 1252. John III died in Nymphaion in 1254, and was buried in the monastery of Sosandra, which he had founded, in the region of Magnesia. Family John III Doukas Vatatzes married first Irene Lascarina, the daughter of his predecessor Theodore I Laskaris in 1212. They had one son, the future Theodore II Doukas Laskaris. Irene fell from a horse and was so badly injured that she was unable to have any more children. Irene retired to a convent, taking the monastic name Eugenia, and died there in summer of 1240. John III married as his second wife Constance II of Hohenstaufen, an illegitimate daughter of Emperor Frederick II by his mistress Bianca Lancia. They had no children. Legacy John III Doukas Vatatzes was a successful ruler who laid the groundwork for Nicaea's recovery of Constantinople. He was successful in maintaining generally peaceful relations with his most powerful neighbors, Bulgaria and the Sultanate of Rum, and his network of diplomatic relations extended to the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy, while his armed forces included Frankish, Cumans, Uzes, Pechenegs mercenaries. John III effected Nicaean expansion into Europe, where by the end of his reign he had annexed his former rival Thessalonica and had expanded at the expense of Bulgaria and Epirus.