not care about the empire's survival, and that he ruled as a tyrant. As John VII had been constitutionally invested with the right to succeed to the throne in 1381, they saw him as the legitimate heir, not Manuel, who was viewed as a usurper more interested in his own power than anything else. This perception of Manuel was used by John VII in his own propaganda. Reconciliation with Manuel II and tenure as regent Tensions between John VII and Manuel escalated as Bayezid began to threaten to conquer Constantinople. In 1394, Bayezid laid siege to the city. Encouraged by the French knight Boucicaut, who had been placed as the leader of Constantinople's defense and who had good relations with both John VII and Manuel, the two emperors reached an agreement meant to end their dynastic feud in 1399. According to the Byzantine monk Symeon of Thessalonica, John VII's attitude towards Manuel had only changed because Bayezid had attacked his lands around Selymbria in 1397. The agreement was that Manuel adopted John VII, and that John VII in turn adopted Manuel's sons and daughters, uniting the two branches of the family. Manuel also formally acknowledged John VII as the first co-emperor, outranking Manuel's own son, John VIII Palaiologos, who then became the second co-emperor. The agreement allowed Manuel to leave the city in a three-year long mission to travel around Europe in an attempt to secure military aid, while John was entrusted to remain in Constantinople as regent, governing the city in Manuel's absence. Though in effect having become Emperor-regent, John's responsibility was mainly the defense of Constantinople, not other matters normally handled by the emperor. Due to a lack of sources, John VII's regency in Constantinople is not well documented, and the extent of his power and how he exercised it is not entirely clear. It does not appear that the 1399 agreement was honoured by Manuel, as he sent his family (now ostensibly John's family) to his brother Theodore Palaiologos in the Morea. The only textual records that survive of John's activities in Constantinople are treaties with the Venetians and Genose, and documentation of his decision to depose Patriarch Matthew I. Matthew I had many enemies in Constantinople, for reasons not entirely clear, and the anti-Matthew faction managed to persuade John VII to depose him. He would later be restored by Manuel once he returned to Constantinople. In