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The Principality of Pindos (also Pindo or Pindus) and Duchy of Macedonia was an autonomous state set up under fascist Italian and Bulgarian control in northwest Greece and southern Yugoslavia during the Second World War and Greek Civil War. The Pindus region spans southern parts of present-day Albania and the Republic of Macedonia¤, in addition to northwestern Greece. The small state was proclaimed during the Italian occupation of northern Greece as the fatherland of ethnic Aromanians, and was called Principato del Pindo by the Italians.

The first prince was the Aromanian head of a fascist organisation known as the Roman Legion: Alkiviadis Diamandi di Samarina, who established his court. In 1943 a faction of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO) offered the throne of Macedonia to H.H. the Prince Altchibiades, thus he held the titles: "His Highness, the Prince of Pindos" and "His Most Serene Excellence, the Duke of Macedonia". HH the Prince Alchibiades was a patron of the arts and an amateur sculptor himself (Zambounis, 2001, see References). He was dethroned by the Italians in 1943 he took refuge in Romania. The title "Prince Regent" was offered for the Milványi Cseszneky family honouring that they had supplied the Italian Army with cereals and cured meats, but neither Baron Julius, nor his brother Michael accepted the throne or set foot on the territory of the state, nevertheless some Aromanian leaders governed in theire names.

The state adopted certain Anti-Greek policy but never was Anti-Semitic. Jews from Kastoria, Veria, Ioannina were in top positions in the hierarchy of the Principality.

Rulers

Diamandi Dinasty:

1940-1943: Prince Alchibiades I (Alkiviadis Diamandi di Samarina)

Arms of HH the Prince Alchibiades

Quarterly, I three moutons passant, Or; II a chèvre salient, gules; III Azure, a river in fess Gules bordered Argent; IV a loup guardant, vert; overall an escutcheon barry of eight Gules and Argent impaling Gules.

References

Toso, Fiorenzo - Frammenti d'Europa

Andreanu, José - Los secretos del Balkan

[1] Worldstatesmen

Iatropoulos, Dimitri - "Balkan Heraldry"

Zambounis, Michael - "Kings and Princes of Greece", Athens 2001