Move the slider to any year: every polity recorded for that year is drawn. Serbian states are gold; the powers that ruled the Serbian lands in the current chapter are green, Kosovo is hatched from 1999, and everything else is grey; 40 chapters carry the story. Borders change only where the dataset records a change, and they fade rather than morph between dated polygons. The slider is stretched so that the dense modern centuries get more room than the long ancient ones. Stars mark capitals and dots mark towns, each shown in its own years. Hover a territory for its name and dates; click it to open its Wikipedia article.

Boundaries are approximate reconstructions from the Cliopatria dataset, and ancient and early medieval dates are approximate. Some polity names were adapted for clarity: Cliopatria’s “Serbian Empire” after 1375 is labelled “Moravian Serbia / Serbian Despotate”, its “Serbian Despots” are the lands of Vuk Branković (1375–1414) and Zeta under the Balšić lords (1415–1421), and its 1992–95 outline of Serbia-Montenegro, which includes Serb-held territories in Croatia and Bosnia, is replaced by the 1996–99 outline of FR Yugoslavia. Cliopatria shows the principality of 1815–1832 with its post-1833 extent. Kosovo is shown as a separate area under UN administration from 1999 and after its 2008 declaration of independence, which Serbia does not recognise. The dashed lines are Serbia and Kosovo today, for orientation only.