Sevastocrator Kalojan and his wife Dessislava from a frescoe in the Bojana church

Despot Constantine and the daughters of tsar Ivan Alexander in a miniature from the London copy of the Four Gospels

Little is known about the attire of the highly ranking dignitaries during the age of the First Bulgarian kingdom. Some depictions and some written sources give the impression, that the dignitaries wore scaramangions - both their personal /Bulgarian/, and imported from Byzantium /mainly as a gift/.
In the times of the Second Bulgarian kingdom the Byzantine entitling come into use. With certainty during the reign of Ivan Assen II /1218-1241/ his brother Alexander was proclaimed sebastocrator, and this title wds used in Bulgaria until the year 1277. After that sebastoctrators were not nominated, riowever, during the reign of Ivan Assen III the title despot was introduced in the year 1279. This title was first conferred on Georgi Terter /a future tsar/ and remained in use until the end of XIV century. It seems, that as a rule, every tsar proclaimed only one sebastocrator and only one despot afterwards. We judge of the insignia of the sebastocrator by the attire of sebastocrator Kaloyan, depicted in the church of Boyana during the reign of Constantine Tih Assen. The attire and the crown /stamatogirion with pearls and a forehead's chamber with a blue diamond/ are similar to those of the Byzantine sebastocrators. Byzantine despots' attire and crowns were worn also by the Bulgarian despots. This was proven by the portraits of the despot Mihail in Dolna Kamenitza and of the despot Constantine in the Gospel of London.
They wore crowns with 4 chambers with built in rubies and purple kavadions with aureate bands at the front and on the periphery.