Augustus II the Strong

Born in 1670 into the Albertine Wettins, Frederick Augustus I became Elector of Saxony in 1694 and promptly converted to Catholicism to secure election as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1697. He transformed Dresden into a baroque jewel, founded the Order of the White Eagle, and collected art with the same appetite he brought to fox tossing and fathering hundreds of illegitimate children. But his reign destabilized Poland: he dragged the Commonwealth into the Great Northern War, leaned on foreign powers to crush local autonomy, and was briefly deposed by Swedish-backed Stanisław Leszczyński between 1706 and 1709. When he died in 1733, his body went to Kraków's Wawel Cathedral and his heart to Dresden - and his succession triggered another war.