After the defeat of the peasant uprising, the boyars placed Georgi Terter on the throne. His twelve-year-long reign has gone down in history marked by the fact that the Tartars resumed their incursions and made him their vassal. During the reign of the next Bulgarian Tsar, Smilets, the Tartars established their complete rule over Bulgaria. In 1298 Smilets was dethroned and Nogai's son Chaka ascended the Bulgarian throne. In less than two years, however, Chaka fell victim to a plot and the throne was occupied by Terter's son Todor Svetoslav, who ruled for 21 years. During his reign Bulgaria waged successful wars against Byzantium and succeeded in taking back the region enclosed between the Balkan Range, the Strandja Mountains and the Black Sea.

Immediately after Todor Svetoslav's death in 1321, Bulgaria lost these lands. While Bulgaria was going through a period of decline, another Slav state in the Balkans, Serbia, was enjoying its greatest upsurge and conquered a considerable part of Bulgaria's southwestern lands. The Bulgarian troops were routed at the battle of Velbuzhd (present-day Kyustendil) in 1230, and Tsar Mihail Shishman, the founder of Bulgaria's last dynasty, perished in the battle. The country became dependent on Serbia, and Ivan-Stefan, the son of the victor at Velbuzhd, Stefan Dechanski, was proclaimed Tsar of Bulgaria.

The Serbian prince, however, had even less luck than the Tartar Chaka and held the Bulgarian throne for only several months. The hegemony of Serbia was done away with and the boyars elected Ivan Alexander as Tsar. His reign was the longest in Bulgarian history – 40 years – but he proved incapable of halting the decline of the Bulgarian state. As regards her territory, Bulgaria shrank to the size from where Asparouh and the Assenids had started. Even in this limited territory, however, she was not a closely rallied political unit, for feudal fragmentation gained the upper hand over central power. The boyars Balik and Dobrotitsa formed an independent feudal principality in the whole of Northeastern Bulgaria, later called Dobroudja after Dobrotitsa's name. Ivan Alexander, while still alive, divided his kingdom between his two sons Ivan Stratsimir and Ivan Shishman. Stratsimir got the western part of the country with Vidin for capital, and Shishman – the eastern part whose capital was Turnovo.

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