Since its fall, the issue of succession to the Byzantine Empire has been a major point of contention both geopolitically, with different states laying claim to the legacy and inheritance of the Byzantine Empire, and among the surviving members of the Byzantine nobility and their descendants. Historically, the most prominent claims have been those of the Ottoman Empire, which conquered Byzantium in 1453 and ruled from its former capital, Constantinople; the Russian Empire, as the most powerful state practising Eastern Orthodox Christianity; and various nobles and figures in Western Europe of increasingly spurious and questionable imperial descent.