 They are recorded numerous times as donors to monasteries and intermarried with the Komnenos family several times throughout that dynasty's tenure as the ruling house of the Byzantine Empire.When the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade took Constantinople in 1204 and momentarily overthrew the Byzantine Empire in favor of the new, Catholic, Latin Empire, the Palaiologoi followed Theodore I Laskaris to the Empire of Nicaea, where they played an active role and continued to occupy offices of high rank.Andronikos Palaiologos, father of the later emperor Michael VIII, was proclaimed "megas domestikos", probably by Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes.