Dumitrașcu Cantacuzino

Dumitrașcu Cantacuzino was the son of the Grand Treasurer (Marele Vistiernic) Michael Kantakouzenos (in Romanian Mihai Cantacuzino) and the great-grandson of Michael Kantakouzenos Şeytanoğlu (in Romanian Mihai Cantacuzino Șaitanoglu), executed in 1578.

In 1663 he betrayed his kinsman and benefactor Constantine Kantakouzenos in favor of Grigore I Ghica. He is then named three times to the throne of Moldavia by the Turks:

• from November 1673 to February 1674, when he seized the throne at the head of an army of 20,000 Tatars who took advantage of it to ravage the country;
• in November 1675;
• from February 8, 1684 to June 25, 1685; in the following July he was definitively driven out of the country with the support of Șerban Cantacuzino, Prince of Wallachia, by his own general Constantin Cantemir, whom he had falsely denounced as a traitor to the Ottomans.

Dumitrașcu Cantacuzino fled to Constantinople where he lived until his death in 1686. He is, in Romanian and Moldavian history, the prototype of the "phanariote profiteur" who founded neither school nor hospice, only ruled 'for its exclusive benefit, acts unscrupulously and impoverishes the country.

From his union with a princess Roxandra he left three children including:

• Cassandra, first wife of Nicholas Mavrocordatos around 1700.