 Villehardouin reports that Boniface trusted Michael, but the latter soon abandoned Boniface and went to Epirus, where he installed himself as the leader of the local Greeks against the Latin Crusaders.The process of Michael's establishment in Epirus is obscure.The hagiography of St. Theodora of Arta, written in the late 13th century, maintains that Alexios III had appointed Michael as governor in the Peloponnese and a certain Senachereim, who was Michael's relative by marriage (they both had married first cousins from the Melissenos family), as governor of the Theme of Nicopolis in Epirus.