John VII's entry into Thessalonica was commemorated in a Byzantine ivory pyxis (a cylindrical box with a lid), today housed at Dumbarton Oaks, which depicts the families of both John VII and Manuel. The pyxis notably depicts Andronikos V more prominently than Manuel's son John VIII, despite John VIII being both older and higher in the line of succession. The plans and hopes for Andronikos V's future fell through when he died 1407, at the age of seven. Monodies (lamentations for a death) were composed for Andronikos and John VII succumbed to intense grief. The Metropolitan of Thessalonica, Gabriel I, wrote a consolatory letter to John VII. In his letter, Gabriel wrote that he too grieved, since he had prayed that the young emperor would grow to adulthood and succeed his father and also stated that he regretted not being present in Thessalonica at the time to offer consolation and sympathy in person. John VII died not long after Andronikos, on 22 September 1408, ending the Byzantine diarchy established in 1403 and John VII's rival imperial lineage. Historiography As a short-lived child emperor, Andronikos is a shadowy and ephemeral figure of whom little source material survives. He was only recently acknowledged by Byzantinists. Andronikos was first identified by George T. Dennis in 1967, with John VII previously believed to have been childless. Dennis based his argument for Andronikos' existence mainly on two previously unpublished manuscripts, one containing a monody and the other containing a consolatory letter to an emperor from a bishop. The monody is titled "Monody on the death of the Lord Emperor Andronikos Palaiologos, the son of Lord John the nephew of Lord Emperor Manuel, at the age of seven years", expliclity identifying the name, father, and age of the child, as well as confirming that he was emperor. The consolatory letter was identified as written by Gabriel of Thessalonica, which means that the timeframe only fits if he wrote to John VII concerning Andronikos' death. Dennis also used the 1403 succession agreement between John VII and Manuel as evidence. The surviving documents only state that John VII would become senior emperor after Manuel, and then be followed by "Manuel's son", who would be followed by "the son of John". Though this could be interpreted as a future supposed child of John, Dennis interpreted it as evidence that John already had a son (Andronikos) by this point. The