Queen Jadwiga. Portrait by Marcello Bacciarelli.

Jadwiga Andegaweńska

Polish monarch of the Anjou dynasty, the first woman in Polish history to be crowned not a queen, but a king. She was most likely born in mid-February 1374, although no surviving source from the era recorded this fact. She was the third daughter and at the same time the last child of her parents:the Hungarian king Louis of Anjou and Queen Elizabeth of Bosnia. There were great plans for her birth, expecting the child to turn out to be a boy, and thus the heir to the throne, saving the dynasty from the specter of extinction. When the girl was born, her father and the influential grandmother, the old Queen Elizabeth the Short, were forced to take special measures to change the rules of inheritance - so that the kingdoms owned by Ludwik could pass to his daughters.

Before his death, my father saw in Jadwiga the future queen of Hungary. Thanks to him, the girl was also engaged to the Austrian prince, Wilhelm Habsburg. However, when the king passed away, the mother made efforts to deprive the girl of her inheritance, and handed over both the Polish and Hungarian thrones to the elderly Maria. Her plans were thwarted only by the resistance of the Polish elites, who demanded a separate ruler for himself, ready to reside in Krakow. After a long and stormy interregnum, Jadwiga came to the Vistula in the late summer of 1384 and was crowned king on October 16.

In February 1386, she married the newly converted Lithuanian prince Jagiełło. It gradually played an increasingly important role in politics, including undertaking negotiations with the grand master of the Teutonic Order. She was a patron of science, a great lover of books, a woman of unusual piety. She maintained active contacts with the Holy See and was instrumental in rebuilding the University of Kraków. She died on July 17, 1399 - less than four weeks after giving birth and four days after her only daughter, Elizabeth Bonifacja, died.