1204 is a milestone year for the Byzantine Empire. The Westerners occupy the eastern part of the Roman Empire and the Byzantine territories are redistributed. Three Greek states that have emerged from its dissolution claim its reestablishment: the Empire of Trebizond by Alexios and David Komnenos, the Empire of Nicaea in Bithynia by the son-in-law of Alexios III, Theodore Laskaris, the state of Epirus by the cousin of Emperor Michael Doukas, and later the ephemeral Kingdom of Thessalonica.
Until the final victory of the Empire of Nicaea in 1261, the changes that occur in Late Byzantine Culture are catalytic and mark the transition from Roman tradition to the formation of an early Greek national consciousness. These changes are outlined through the work of George Akropolites, Historian of the Fall of 1204 and the events until the recapture of Constantinople in 1261 by Michael VIII Palaiologos.