Serbian princess of Nemanjić descent and wife of Prince Lazar, who governed Serbia for her son Stefan Lazarević after Lazar fell at Kosovo in 1389, accepted Ottoman overlordship, and ended her life as the nun Evgenija at her foundation of Ljubostinja.
Milica was the wife of Prince Lazar, the most powerful Serbian lord of the 1370s and 1380s, and a descendant of the Nemanjić dynasty that had ruled Serbia for two centuries. Her lineage linked Lazar's family to the old royal house, and their daughters married into the leading families of the Balkans. When Lazar was killed at the Battle of Kosovo on 15 June 1389, their son Stefan Lazarević was about twelve, and Milica governed in his name until 1393.
Her regency began with a Hungarian invasion and a quarrel with her son-in-law Vuk Branković, and she secured it by accepting the overlordship of Bayezid I and sending her youngest daughter, Olivera, to his court. In 1393 she became a nun at Ljubostinja, the monastery she had founded, but she stayed active in politics and travelled to the Ottomans to plead for her son. Serbian tradition remembers her as Tsaritsa Milica and credits her with prayers and a lament for her husband.
Milica was born around 1335, the daughter of Prince Vratko, whom Serbian epic poetry calls Jug Bogdan. According to Serbian genealogies, Vratko was a great-grandson of Vukan, the eldest son of Stefan Nemanja, which made Milica a member of an elder but side branch of the Nemanjić family and a distant cousin of the emperor Stefan Dušan. Her only recorded brother, the župan Nikola, was buried in 1379 at the monastery of Saint Nicholas in Kuršumlija. She married Lazar Hrebeljanović, then a courtier of Dušan, probably around 1353. After the Serbian empire broke apart under Dušan's son Uroš, Lazar built a principality in the Morava valley centred on Kruševac. Milica bore him eight children: three sons, of whom Dobrovoj died young, and five daughters, who married the lord of Zeta, the tsar Ivan Shishman, Vuk Branković and, in Olivera's case, the sultan.
The sources on Milica are few and mostly religious: donor inscriptions and charters, the writings of the nun Jefimija, who shared her monastic life and her journeys, and the biography of Stefan Lazarević written by Constantine of Kostenets in the 1430s, which honours her as the pious and wise mother of its hero. Serbian church tradition made her a model of the devout widow and a saint. The text known as A Mother's Prayer, issued with her sons in 1397, and the lament My Widowhood's Bridegroom are attributed to her, and they show her writing in the language of Orthodox devotion rather than revealing much about her private feelings.
Her recorded actions show a firmer political character than the saintly image suggests. She came to terms with Bayezid I, whose army had killed her husband, and gave him her daughter; as a nun she travelled to the Ottoman court and raised troops for her son. Modern historians also suspect that her bitter dispute with Vuk Branković in 1389–1390 lies behind the later Serbian tradition that Branković betrayed Lazar at Kosovo, a charge they regard as unfounded. If so, Milica's court shaped the memory of the battle for centuries. Later tradition remembers her above all for the strength of her personality.
Lazar died at the Battle of Kosovo on 15 June 1389, where Murad I was also killed, and the new sultan, Bayezid I, withdrew to secure his succession. Milica governed for Stefan with the support of the church and the Serbian nobility. In the autumn of 1389 Sigismund of Luxembourg, king of Hungary, invaded from the north, took the fortresses of Borač and Čestin and reached the country around Kragujevac. At the same time Vuk Branković, the husband of her daughter Mara, who ruled lands to the south and had accepted Lazar as his overlord, tried to take Lazar's place as the leading Serbian lord.
Facing enemies on two sides, Milica and her council chose peace with the Ottomans. Serbia accepted Bayezid I as overlord, paid tribute and sent troops for his campaigns; Stefan and his brother Vuk had to present themselves at the sultan's court each year and escorted Olivera to Bayezid as his wife. The settlement brought quick results, and in the summer of 1390 Serbian troops with Ottoman support recovered the fortresses lost to Hungary. Around this time Lazar's remains were moved from Priština to his foundation at Ravanica, where his cult as a martyr grew. In 1393, when Stefan came of age, Milica handed over the government.
Milica founded the monastery of Ljubostinja near Trstenik around 1390, dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin; its church, built in the Morava style by the master builder Rade Borović, carries his name on the threshold. In 1393 she took monastic vows there as the nun Evgenija, later taking the name Jefrosina. Other widows of the war with the Ottomans joined her, among them Jefimija, the widow of the despot Jovan Uglješa, who had fallen at the Maritsa in 1371.
The nun Evgenija did not withdraw from affairs. In 1397 she and her sons issued A Mother's Prayer for the monastery of Dečani, where she paid for the repair of the bronze chandelier. In the spring of 1398, when accusations against Stefan reached Bayezid I, she and Jefimija travelled to the sultan and won Stefan a hearing, returning with the relics of Saint Petka, which were probably placed in the castle church at Kruševac. After Bayezid's defeat at Ankara in 1402, war broke out between Stefan and the Branković family. That autumn Evgenija raised troops in Serbia while Stefan made his way home through Zeta, and in 1403 she went to the Ottoman court at Serres, then held by Bayezid's son Süleyman, to argue her son's case.
Milica died on 11 November 1405, aged about seventy, and was buried at Ljubostinja. Jefimija, who survived her, was later buried there as well. The Serbian Orthodox Church canonised Milica, and her husband Lazar and her son Stefan are also venerated as saints.