Young Władysław seemed to be the last possible candidate for the future king of Poland. Not only did he not look very presentable (he was known to be a dwarf), but he did not even have his own principality. And mommy caused him problems as soon as he was born ...
In the Middle Ages, the older your son was, the better your position was. However, Łokietek was unlucky:he was born twenty years too late. When he was in diapers, his two older brothers - Leszek Czarny and Siemomysł - were already entering adulthood. He also had two younger ones - Kazimierz II and Siemowit. Such a crowd of siblings did not herald anything good! Łokietek's father, Kazimierz I, ruled over the Kuyavian principality, shaken by constant conflicts. It would be hard to divide them among five sons.
Władysław Łokietek had a hard time at the start. His father, Kazimierz I Kujawski, had five sons. Two of them were much older than Łokietek. The illustration shows Kazimierz I on the patents of Konrad I Mazowiecki's foundation.
Mother's Shadow
Eufrozyna, the third wife of Kazimierz and the mother of Łokietek, was well aware of this. According to one of the chronicles, she decided to help her son in a popular and usually effective way:she tried to poison Władysław's stepbrothers!
The information about this is not certain, but there is no doubt that the precautionary mother led to a dispute between her husband Kazimierz and his sons from an earlier marriage. It ended completely unfortunate. Leszek Czarny and Siemomysł rebelled against their father, won a short war with him and seized part of the state for themselves.
As a result, Władysław Łokietek was screwed up before he left the cradle . Later it only got worse. The little prince's father died in 1267 when he was less than seven years old.
At such a young age, could not catch an inheritance . Leszek Czarny received Łęczyca and Siemomysł Inowrocław. The rest of the divided state was in the hands of Eufroszyn, who acted as the guardian of the younger sons. This care should be rather figurative, because Łokietek left for Kraków right after his father's death. The local prince Bolesław the Chaste took him to his court.
Władysław Łokietek. Little ruler with great… bad luck.
Who knows, maybe there is some grain of truth in the literary interpretation of the writer, Elżbieta Cherezińska. In the novel "The Crown of Snow and Blood" she claimed that Łokietek was terrified of his mother and wanted to run away from her from Kujawy, where pepper grows ... Anyway, who would not be afraid of a woman who uses poison to achieve her goals?
Misfortunes come in… dozens?
The care could not last forever, of course, but even when Łokietek grew up, did not get his own piece of the country . He was to rule in one Brzeg principality with his brothers Kazimierz and Siemowit. Although in this triumvirate he came to the fore with time, he was still one of the weakest princes in Poland . Meanwhile, his eldest, half-brother - Leszek the Black - had an amazing career. In 1279 he became the prince of Kraków.
The elbow completely obeyed him, which he even showed on his coat of arms. Leszek Czarny and Siemomysł used a crowned half-lion and half-eagle. Elbow-high humbly resigned from the crown on the coat of arms. As Paweł Żmudzki writes in his book "A Study of a Divided Kingdom", he obtained the seal with the crowned coat of arms of Łokietek only after the death of his older brothers.
Even Władysław's marriage was decided by his brother despite the fact that our hero was already over 20 years old. In 1284 he was married to Jadwiga, the cousin of the Greater Poland prince Przemysław. Not only did he have nothing to say, but also ... did not get a dowry . Zagople intended for this purpose was immediately seized by his other brother, Siemomysł!
Only after the death of Leszek the Black in 1288, it seemed for a moment that the fortune would finally smile at the unfortunate Łokietek. He actually became the prince of Krakow for a short time, but was immediately driven out of there by Henry IV Probus. A few years later, he was humiliated, humiliated and expelled from the country by the Czech king, Wenceslaus II. Overall, the hapless prince's youth was one big losing streak .
He had to wait for a change of fate until the beginning of the next century…