Mindaugas

Little is known of Mindaugas before 1219, when he appears in a treaty as an elder duke; by 1236 he's named leader of all Lithuanians. He consolidated power through strategic marriages and the banishment or killing of rivals, extending his domain southeast through the 1230s and 1240s. Around 1250 he was baptised Roman Catholic - a calculated move that let him ally with the Livonian Order, Lithuania's longtime enemy. By 1245 documents called him "the highest king"; in summer 1253 he was crowned, ruling 300,000 to 400,000 subjects. The Livonians called him Mindaugas the Sapient. But Samogitia in the west resisted his alliance, Tatars challenged his southeastern gains, and relatives kept plotting. He broke peace with the Livonians in 1261, possibly renouncing Christianity. On 12 September 1263 his nephew Treniota and Duke Daumantas of Pskov assassinated him; his three immediate successors met the same end. Disorder lasted until Traidenis took control around 1270. Centuries later Mindaugas was recast as state founder; in the 1990s a historian pegged his coronation to 6 July 1253, now Lithuania's Statehood Day.

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