Anna-⁠Neda

The Venerable Ana-⁠Neda was the daughter of the Serbian king Stefan Uroš II Milutin and first wife of Michael III Shishman, tsar of Bulgaria, in 1323 to 1324 and again in 1330 to 1331 as the tsar's mother. She is venerated in Serbian tradition as the Venerable Jelena of Dečani. The Serbian Orthodox Church commemorates her on 21 May (3 June by the civil calendar). The identification with the "Saint Jelena" of the tradition is debated.

Her mother was one of Milutin's wives, according to some studies Elizabeth of Hungary, and through her parents she was tied to the Nemanjić dynasty, the Árpáds and the house of Anjou. The marriage with Michael Shishman followed a peace after her father's war with Shishman. In 1323 Michael was crowned tsar, and she received the title "faithful tsaritsa". In 1324 he divorced her to marry Theodora, daughter of the Byzantine emperor Michael IX Palaiologos, for an alliance with Byzantium against the Serbs. Ana was sent to Tarnovo with her children. They had at least four sons: Michael, Ivan Stephen, Shishman and Lodovico. In 1330 Michael was killed in the battle of Velbazhd by the Serbian army led by her brother Stefan Uroš III, and the Bulgarians set her son Ivan Stephen on the throne. In that year Ana ruled as regent, and in 1331 her son was removed by the Bulgarian boyars, and she fled to Serbia and then to Dubrovnik. She sought and received support from her Neapolitan cousins. It seems that in her later years she converted to Latin Christianity, taking the name Domenica, and the name Neda would be the Serbian rendering of "Sunday".

It is believed that at the end of her life she took the monastic habit with the name Jelena and returned to Serbia, at the request of King Stefan Dečanski. Before she died she built the church of the Mother of God in the village of Krushevo in Hvosno, where a fourteenth-⁠century gravestone is still kept. By tradition Saint Jelena founded the monastery of Ubožac, and her relics rest at Visoki Dečani. In 1692, when the Turks wished to make Dečani a mosque, a miracle ascribed to her took place, according to tradition, which prevented the plan. At Gornji Matejevac near Niš an icon of her from the nineteenth century is kept.