Otto III, Margrave of Brandenburg
Otto III, nicknamed the pious was Margrave of Brandenburg jointly with his elder brother John I until John died in 1266. Otto III ruled alone, until his death, the following year; the reign of these two Ascanian Margraves was characterized by an expansion of the Margraviate, which annexed the remaining parts of Teltow and Barnim, the Uckermark, the Lordship of Stargard, the Lubusz Land and parts of the Neumark east of the Oder. They consolidated the position of Brandenburg within the Holy Roman Empire, reflected in the fact that in 1256, Otto III was a candidate to be elected King of the Germans, they developed the twin cities of Cölln and Berlin. They made it their preferred residence. Before their death, they divided the Margraviate in an Ottonian part; the Ascanians were traditionally buried in the Lehnin Abbey in the Ottonian part of the country. In 1258, they founded a Cistercian monastery named Mariensee, where members of the Johannine line could be buried. In 1266, they changed their mind and founded a second monastery, named Chorin, 8 km southwest of Mariensee.
John was buried at Mariensee. After the Ottonian line died out in 1317, John I's grandson Waldemar reunited the Margraviate. Otto was the younger son of Albert II of the Brandenburg line of the House of Ascania and Mechthild of Lusatia, daughter of Count Conrad II of Lusatia, a junior line of the House of Wettin. Since both Otto and his two-year older brother John I were minors when their father died in 1220, Emperor Frederick II transferred the regency to Archbishop Albert I of Magdeburg; the guardianship was taken up by the children's first cousin once removed, Count Henry I of Anhalt, the older brother of Duke Albert I of Saxony, a cousin of Albert II. As the sons of Duke Bernard III of Saxony, they were the closest relatives, Henry had the older rights. In 1221, their mother, Countess Matilda, purchased the regency from the Archbishop of Magdeburg for 1900 silver Marks and ruled jointly with Hernry I; the Archbishop of Magdeburg traveled to Italy, to visit Emperor Frederick II and Duke Albert I of Saxony attempted to grab power in Brandenburg, causing a rift with his brother Henry I.
The Saxon attack presented an opportunity for Count Palatine Henry V to get involved. Emperor Frederick II managed urging them to keep the peace. After Matilda died in 1225, the brothers ruled the Margraviate of Brandenburg jointly. John I was about twelve years old at the time, Otto III was ten, they were knighted on 11 May 1231 in Brandenburg an der Havel and this is taken as the beginning of their reign. After the death of Count Henry of Brunswick-Lüneburg in 1227, the brothers supported his nephew, their brother-in-law Otto the Child, only able to prevail against Hohenstaufen claims and its vassals by force of arms. In 1229, there was a feud with former regent Archbishop Albert. Like their former opponents and defenders, they appeared at the Diet of Mainz in 1235, where the Public Peace of Mainz was proclaimed. After the dispute over the kingship between Conrad IV and Henry Raspe the brothers recognized William II of Holland as king in 1251, they first exercised Brandenburg's electoral privilege in 1257, when they voted for king Alfonso X of Castile.
Although Alfonso was not elected, the fact that they were able to vote illustrates the growing importance of Brandenburg, founded only a century earlier, in 1157, by Albert the Bear. When John and Otto came to power, Brandenburg was considered an insignificant little principality on the eastern border. By the 1230s, the Margraves of Brandenburg had gained the heritable post of Imperial Chamberlain and the indisputable right to vote in the election of the King of the Germans. John I and his brother Otto III developed the territory of their margraviate and expanded market towns and castles, including Spandau, Cölln and Prenzlau into towns and centers of commerce, they expanded Frankfurt an der Oder and John I awarded it city status in 1253. Between 1230 and 1245, Brandenburg acquired the remaining part of Barnim and the southern Uckermark up to the Welse river. On 20 June 1236, the Margraviate acquired the Lordships of Stargard and Wustrow by the Treaty of Kremmen from Duke Wartislaw III of Pomerania.
That year, the brothers initiated the construction of Stargard Castle, to secure the northernmost part of their territory. From 1239 to 1245, the brothers fought the Teltow War against the Margraves of Meissen of the House of Wettin. At stake was a Slavic castle at Köpenick, a former headquarters of the Sprewanen tribe, located at the confluence of the Spree and Dahme rivers, at the time, it was just east of Berlin, it dominated the Teltow areas. In 1245, the brothers managed to take a fortress at Mittenwalde. From this base, they could expand further to the east. In 1249, they reached the river Oder. In 1250, the brothers closed the Treaty of Landin with the Dukes of Pomerania. Under this treaty, they received the northern part of the Uckermark, north of the Welse river and the districts of Randow and Löcknitz, in exchange for the half of the Lordship of Wolgast that John I had received as dowry from King Waldemar II of Denmark when he married his first wife, Sophia; this treaty is considered the birth of the Uckermark as a part of Brandenburg.
Otto joined King Ottokar II of Bohemia in 1255 in the Prussian Crusade, helped establish Königsberg. During the first third of the 13th century German settlers were recruited by Duke Leszek I the Whit
Bolesław III Wrymouth
Bolesław III Wrymouth, was a Duke of Lesser Poland and Sandomierz between 1102 and 1107 and over the whole Poland between 1107 and 1138. He was the only child of Prince Władysław I Herman and his first wife Judith, daughter of Vratislaus II of Bohemia. Bolesław began to rule in the last decade of the 11th century, when the central government in Poland was weakened. Władysław I Herman fell under the political dependence of the Count palatine Sieciech, who became the real ruler of the country. Backed by their father and his half-brother Zbigniew expelled Sieciech from the country in 1101, after several years of fighting. After the death of Władysław I Herman in 1102, two independent states were created ruled by Bolesław and Zbigniew. Bolesław sought to gain Pomerania which caused an armed conflict between the brothers, forced Zbigniew to flee the country and seek military help from German King Henry V. Bolesław punished Zbigniew by blinding him; this action caused outrage among supporters of Zbigniew.
Bolesław once again gained the favor of his subjects with public penance, made a pilgrimage to the monastery of his patron, Saint Giles, in Hungary. Bolesław, like Bolesław II the Generous, based his foreign policy on maintaining good relations with neighboring Hungary and Kievan Rus, with whom he forged strong links through marriage and military cooperation in order to break the political dependence on Germany and his vassal, the King of Bohemia, who in moments of weakness of Polish policy was forced to pay tribute in Silesia; these alliances have allowed Bolesław to defend the country from invasion in 1109. Several years Bolesław skillfully took advantage of the dynastic disputes in Bohemia to ensure peace on the south-west border. Bolesław devoted the second half of his rule to the conquest of Pomerania. In 1113 he conquered the northern strongholds along Noteć, which strengthened the border with the Pomeranians. In subsequent years, he took steps toward the conquest of Pomerania; the resolution of the conflict with the Holy Roman Empire allowed Bolesław to subordinate Western Pomerania and incorporate Gdańsk Pomerania.
The military expeditions, carried out in three stages, ended in the 1120s with military and political successes. Integration of the newly annexed lands enabled Bolesław to build churches and began the process of converting Pomerania. Bishop Otto of Bamberg confirmed the Christianization of Pomerania from 1123 onward. In the 1130s Bolesław participated in the dynastic dispute in Hungary. After an unexpected defeat, he was forced to make an agreement with Germany; the Congress of Merseburg of 1135 addressed the issues of Pomerania, Silesian sovereignty and the supremacy of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg over the Polish Church. Bolesław was married twice, his first marriage with the Kievan princess Zbyslava gave him an excuse to intervene militarily in the internal affairs of Russia. After her death, Bolesław married to a German noblewoman, Salomea of Berg, which in some way was the cause of changes in Polish foreign policy: in the second half of his rule, the Prince sought to restore diplomatic relations with his western neighbor.
His last, the most momentous act, was his will and testament known as "The Succession Statute" in which he divided the country among his sons, leading to 200 years of feudal fragmentation of the Polish Kingdom. Bolesław III Wrymouth has been recognized by historiography as a symbol of Polish political aspirations until well into the 19th century, he upheld the independence of the Polish archbishopric of Gniezno, despite a temporary failure in the 1130s. Despite undoubted successes, he committed serious political errors, most notably against Zbigniew of Poland, his half-brother; the crime against Zbigniew and his penance for it show Bolesław's great ambition as well as his ability to find political compromise. In 1086 the coronation of Vratislav II as King of Bohemia, his alignment with László I, King of Hungary, threatened the position of the Polish ruler, Prince Władysław I Herman. Therefore, that same year Władysław I was forced to recall from Hungarian banishment the only son of Bolesław II the Bold and a rightful heir to the Polish throne, Mieszko Bolesławowic.
Upon his return young Bolesławowic accepted the over-lordship of his uncle and gave up his hereditary claim to the crown of Poland in exchange for becoming first in line to succeed him. In return, Władysław I Herman granted his nephew the district of Kraków; the situation was further complicated for Władysław I Herman by a lack of a legitimate male heir, as his first-born son Zbigniew came from a union not recognized by the church. With the return of Mieszko Bolesławowic to Poland, Władysław I normalized his relations with the kingdom of Hungary as well as Kievan Rus; these actions allowed Herman to strengthen his authority and alleviate further tensions in international affairs. The lack of a legitimate heir, remained a concern for Władysław I and in 1085 he and his wife Judith of Bohemia sent rich gifts, among, a life size statue of a child made of gold, to the Benedictine Sanctuary of Saint Giles in Saint-Gilles, Provence begging for offspring; the Polish envoys were led by the personal chaplain of Piotr.
The date of birth of Bolesław is linked with the death of his mother Judith. This fact is evidenced by contemporary sources: Gallus Anonymus in the Cronicae et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum reported that Duchess Judith gave birth to Bolesław on the day of King Saint Stephen of Hungary (w
Gallus Anonymus
Gallus Anonymus is the name traditionally given to the anonymous author of Gesta principum Polonorum, composed in Latin about 1115. Gallus is regarded as the first historian to have described Poland, his Chronicles are an obligatory text for university courses in Poland's history. Little is known of the author himself; the only source for Gallus' existence is a note made by Prince-Bishop of Warmia Marcin Kromer in the margin of folio 119 of the "Heilsberg manuscript." It reads: Gallus hanc historiam scripsit, opinor, aliquis, ut ex proemiis coniicere licet qui Boleslai tertii tempore vixit It is not known whether Kromer intended the word "Gallus" as a proper name or as a reference to the author's nationality, nor what he based his identification on. The Heilsberg manuscript, one of three extant witnesses of the Gesta, was written between 1469 and 1471. From the mid-16th to 18th centuries, it was kept in the town of Heilsberg, it was published at the behest of Prince-Bishop of Warmia Adam Stanisław Grabowski.
The author of the Gesta wrote little about himself and was not written about in contemporary sources. What Gallus did write about himself may be summed up as follows: Before going to Poland, he spent some time in Hungary, where he met Polish duke Bolesław III Wrymouth. Historians agree that Gallus' writing style indicates a substantial education, available only to nobles and monks; the clericus de penna vivens is suspected by Danuta Borawska and Marian Plezia to have earlier penned the Gesta Hungarorum and the Translatio Sancti Nicolai. Budapest's Vajdahunyad Castle features an evocative bronze statue of a seated Anonymus in monk's habit, the cowl obscuring his face. Gallus' place of origin is unknown. Several theories have been advanced. Traditional scholarship has assumed that he was French from France or Flanders. Plezia has suggested that he was a monk from Saint Giles' Monastery in France; the name Gallus may be related to the name of Saint Gall the Gaelic founder of the Swiss monastery. Considering the high number of European abbeys founded by wandering Irish literati, the possibility that the Chronicler of the Poles & the Hungarians was born in Ireland should at least be considered.
Some scholars have pointed out that Gallus' writing style resembles that of Hildebert of Lavardin and have thought that Gallus had been educated at Le Mans or, according to Zathey, at Chartres or Bec in Normandy. Before World War II, French historian Pierre David advanced a theory that Gallus might have been a Hungarian monk from Saint Giles' Monastery in Somogyvár who accompanied Prince Bolesław III in his return from Hungary to Poland; this theory enjoys little support. Another theory has been gaining ground in Poland. Professors Danuta Borawska and Tomasz Jasiński of Poznań University have presented a case for a Venetian origin, it has been argued that Gallus may have been a monk from St. Giles' Monastery at the Lido, Venice and Professor Plezia has subsequently concurred; the Venetian theory was first broached in 1904 by Polish historian Tadeusz Wojciechowski. In 1965 it did not win acceptance. In recent years, however, it has been revisited and has now gained positive reviews from several Polish medievalists.
It has been supported by Roman Michałowski and Wojciech Fałkowski. Fałkowski has noted that the two theories—French and Italian—may be less mutually exclusive than some think, as Gallus might have been born in Italy, been a monk at the Lido, have traveled to France and Hungary. According to Tomasz Jasiński, who in 2008 published a book on Gallus, the chronicler came to Poland over the Via Egnatia across the Slavic-speaking countries of "Epirus, Dalmatia, Istria." When Jasiński compared the Chronicle with the Transfer of St. Nicholas, he found over 100 similarities. Jasiński has concluded that Gallus, like many Venetian clergymen of the time, had a native knowledge of both Italian and Slavic languages. However, Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer regard the Venetian suggestion as "too weak to be considered seriously." In Poland, medievalist Professor Jacek Banaszkiewicz supports a French over an Italian origin for Gallus Anonymus. The anonymous author of the Gesta influenced the subsequent course of Poland's history, in that his version of early Polish history held the ruler's authority to be inferior to that of God, as expressed by the voice of the people.
This concept reinforced Poles' electoral traditions and their tendency to disobey and question authority. Via the Chronicles of Wincenty Kadłubek and the Sermons of Stanisław of Skarbimierz, it contributed to the development of the unique "Golden Liberty" that would characterize the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, whose kings were elected and were obliged to obey the Sejm. Anonymus Gesta Hungarorum Edmund Kotarski: Gall Anonim Gazeta Wyborcza article about Gallus Anonymus' Venetian ori
Szlachta
The szlachta was a privileged noble class in the Kingdom of Poland, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After the Union of Lublin in 1569, the Grand Duchy and its neighbouring Kingdom became a single state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; the origins of the szlachta are shrouded in obscurity and mystery and have been the subject of several theories. Traditionally, its members were landowners in the form of "manorial estates" or so-called folwarks; the nobility won substantial and increasing political and legal privileges for itself throughout its entire history until the decline and end of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century. Apart from providing officers for the army, among its chief civic obligations were electing the monarch, plus filling advisory and honorary roles at court, e.g. Stolnik - "Master of the King's Pantry," or their assistant, in the state government, e.g. Podskarbi, "Minister to the Treasury", they served as elected representatives in the Sejm and in local Sejmiki assemblies, appointing officials and overseeing judicial and financial governance, including tax-raising, at the provincial level.
Their roles included Voivodeship, Marshal of Voivodeship and Starosta. The szlachta gained considerable institutional privileges between 1333 and 1370 in the Kingdom of Poland during the reign of King Casimir III the Great. In 1413, following a series of tentative personal unions between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, the existing Lithuanian-Ruthenian nobility formally joined this class; as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth evolved and expanded in territory, its membership grew to include the leaders of Ducal Prussia and Livonia. During the Partitions of Poland from 1772 to 1795, minor szlachta began to lose these legal privileges and social status, while elites became part of nobility of partitioning countries. Although in reality, szlachta members could have unequal status due to wealth and political influence, there were few official distinctions between the elites and common nobility. Unlike in most other countries, those few hereditary titles that there were in the Kingdom of Poland, were bestowed by foreign monarchs, including personal hereditary titles granted by the Pope, see Feliks Sobański as an example.
While in Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Samogitia princely titles were inherited either by descendants of Old Lithuanian-Ruthenian Rurikid and Gediminids princely families, or by princely dynasties of Tatar origin that settled there. The Polish term szlachta is derived from the Old High German word slahta. In modern German Geschlecht - which came from the Proto-Germanic *slagiz, "blow", "strike", shares the Anglo-Saxon root for "slaughter" or the verb "to slug" – means "breeding" or gender. Like many other Polish words pertaining to nobility, it derives from Germanic words: So for example, the Polish for a "knight" is "rycerz", a cognate of the German "Ritter"; the Polish word for "coat of arms" is "herb" from the German "Erbe" or "heritage". 17th century Poles assumed that "szlachta" came from the German "schlachten" "to slaughter" or "to butcher", was therefore related to the German word for battle, "Schlacht". Some early Polish historians thought the term might have derived instead from the name of the legendary proto-Polish chief, mentioned in Polish and Czech writings.
A few exceptionally wealthy and powerful szlachta members during the 17th and 18th centuries came to be known as "magnates" - "możni": see Magnates of Poland and Lithuania. The Polish term "szlachta" designated the formalized, hereditary noble class of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which constituted the nation itself, ruled without competition. In official Latin documents of the old Commonwealth, the hereditary szlachta were referred to as "nobilitas" from the Latin term, could be compared in legal status to English or British peers of the realm, or to the ancient Roman idea of cives, "citizen". Today the word szlachta translates as "nobility". In its broadest sense, it can denote some non-hereditary honorary knighthoods and baronial titles granted by other European monarchs, including the Holy See. 19th-century landowners of non-noble descent were referred to as szlachta by courtesy or error, when they owned manorial estates but were not in fact noble by birth. Szlachta denotes the Ruthenian and Lithuanian nobility from before the old-Commonwealth.
In the past, a misconception sometimes led to the mistranslation of "szlachta" as "gentry" rather than "nobility". This mistaken practice began due to the inferior economic status of many szlachta members compared to that of the nobility in other European countries; the szlachta included those rich and powerful enough to be magnates down to the indigent with a noble lineage, but with no land, no castle, no money, no village, no subject peasants. At least 60,000 families belonged to the nobility, only about 100 were wealthy, all the rest were poor. Over time, numerically most lesser szlachta became or were poorer than their few rich peers in their social class, many were worse off than the non-noble gentry, they were called szlachta zagrodowa, that is, "nobility from within the second estate compound", sometimes referred to as drobna szlachta, "petty nobles" or yet, szlachta okoliczna, meaning "local". Impoverished szlachta families were forced to become tenants of their wealthier peers, they were described as "tenant nobles" who paid rent.
In doing so, they retained all their constitutional prerogati
Griffin
The griffin, griffon, or gryphon is a legendary creature with the body and back legs of a lion. Because the lion was traditionally considered the king of the beasts and the eagle the king of birds by the Middle Ages the griffin was thought to be an powerful and majestic creature. Since classical antiquity, Griffins were known for guarding treasure and priceless possessions. In Greek and Roman texts and Arimaspians were associated with gold deposits of Central Asia. Indeed, as Pliny the Elder wrote, "griffins were said to lay eggs in burrows on the ground and these nests contained gold nuggets."In medieval heraldry, the Griffin became a Christian symbol of divine power and a guardian of the divine. The derivation of this word remains uncertain, it could be related to the Greek word γρυπός, meaning'curved', or'hooked'. This could have been an Anatolian loan word, compare Akkadian karūbu, similar to Cherub. A related Hebrew word is כרוב. Most statuary representations of griffins depict them with bird-like talons, although in some older illustrations griffins have a lion's forelimbs.
Its eagle's head is conventionally given prominent ears. Infrequently, a griffin is portrayed without wings, or a wingless eagle-headed lion is identified as a griffin. In 15th-century and heraldry, such a beast may be called an alce or a keythong. In heraldry, a griffin always has forelegs like an eagle's hind-legs. A type of griffin with the four legs of a lion was distinguished by only one English herald of heraldry as the Opinicus, which had a camel-like neck and a short tail that resembles a camel's tail. There is evidence of representations of griffins in Ancient Iranian and Ancient Egyptian art dating back to before 3000 BC. In Egypt, a griffin can be seen in a cosmetic palette from Hierakonpolis, known as the "Two Dog Palette", dated to ca. 3300-3100 BC. In Iranian mythology, griffin is called Shirdal means: Lion-Eagle. Shirdal have used in ancient art of Iran since late second millennium BC. Shirdals appeared on cylinder seals from Susa as early as 3000 BC. Shirdals are common motifs in the art of Luristan and North West region of Iran in Iron Age, Achaemenid art.
Griffin depictions appear in the Levant and Anatolia in the Middle Bronze Age, dated at about 1950-1550 BC. Early depictions of griffins in Ancient Greek art are found in the 15th century BC frescoes in the Throne Room of the Bronze Age Palace of Knossos, as restored by Sir Arthur Evans, it continued being a favored decorative theme in Classical Greek art. In Central Asia, the griffin appears about a thousand years after Bronze Age Crete, in the 5th–4th centuries BC originating from the Achaemenid Persian Empire; the Achaemenids considered the griffin "a protector from evil and secret slander". The modern generalist calls it the lion-griffin, as for example, Robin Lane Fox, in Alexander the Great, 1973:31 and notes p. 506, who remarks a lion-griffin attacking a stag in a pebble mosaic at Pella as an emblem of the kingdom of Macedon or a personal one of Alexander's successor Antipater. The Pisa Griffin is a large bronze sculpture, in Pisa in Italy since the Middle Ages, though it is of Islamic origin.
It is the largest bronze medieval Islamic sculpture known, at over three feet tall, was created in the 11th century in Al-Andaluz. From about 1100 it was placed on a column on the roof of Pisa Cathedral until replaced by a replica in 1832. Adrienne Mayor, a classical folklorist and historian of science, proposes that the ancient Greek idea and image of the griffin in classical art and literature beginning in the seventh century BC was influenced in part by the fossilized remains of beaked dinosaurs such as Protoceratops observed on the way to gold deposits by nomadic prospectors of ancient Scythia, This hypothesis is speculative, based on a number of Greek and Latin literary sources and related artworks, beginning with the first written ancient descriptions of griffins in a lost work by Aristeas of Proconnessus in the seventh century BC), cited by Aeschylus and Herodotus and ending with Aelian. Mayor's suggestion has been contested in a blog claiming that it ignores pre-Mycenaean accounts and bird-lion composites in earlier art that goes far earlier than 7th century BCE..
A multitude of imaginary composite creatures combining features of birds and mammals can be found in ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern art, including mammals with bird heads in Minoan, Mycenaean,and Egyptian art, but there are no pre-Mycenaean written accounts about Griffins. Mayor's suggestion is speculative, intended to account for the profusion of Greco-Latin literary accounts of the "gryps" as a real animal of the East and the accompanying popularity of artistic representations that arose in Greece after travelers like Aristeas brought back tales of "Griffins" from Central Asia. Several ancient mythological creatures are similar to the griffin; these include the Lama
Dynasty
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family in the context of a feudal or monarchical system, but sometimes appearing in elective republics. Alternative terms for "dynasty" may include "family" and "clan", among others; the longest-surviving dynasty in the world is the Imperial House of Japan, otherwise known as the Yamato dynasty, whose reign is traditionally dated to 660 BC. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a "noble house", which may be styled as "royal", "princely", "ducal", "comital" etc. depending upon the chief or present title borne by its members. Historians periodize the histories of numerous nations and civilizations, such as Ancient Egypt and Imperial China, using a framework of successive dynasties; as such, the term "dynasty" may be used to delimit the era during which a family reigned, to describe events and artifacts of that period. The word "dynasty" itself is dropped from such adjectival references; until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty: that is, to expand the wealth and power of his family members.
Prior to the 20th century, dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally, such as under the Frankish Salic law. In nations where it was permitted, succession through a daughter established a new dynasty in her husband's ruling house; this has changed in some places in Europe, where succession law and convention have maintained dynasties de jure through a female. For instance, the House of Windsor will be maintained through the children of Queen Elizabeth II, as it did with the monarchy of the Netherlands, whose dynasty remained the House of Orange-Nassau through three successive queens regnant; the earliest such example among major European monarchies was in the Russian Empire in the 18th century, where the name of the House of Romanov was maintained through Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna. In Limpopo Province of South Africa, Balobedu determined descent matrilineally, while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mother's dynasty when coming into her inheritance.
Less a monarchy has alternated or been rotated, in a multi-dynastic system – that is, the most senior living members of parallel dynasties, at any point in time, constitute the line of succession. Not all feudal states or monarchies were/are ruled by dynasties. Throughout history, there were monarchs. Dynasties ruling subnational monarchies do not possess sovereign rights; the word "dynasty" is sometimes used informally for people who are not rulers but are, for example, members of a family with influence and power in other areas, such as a series of successive owners of a major company. It is extended to unrelated people, such as major poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team; the word "dynasty" derives from Latin dynastia, which comes from Greek dynastéia, where it referred to "power", "dominion", "rule" itself. It was the abstract noun of dynástēs, the agent noun of dynamis, "power" or "ability", from dýnamai, "to be able". A ruler from a dynasty is sometimes referred to as a "dynast", but this term is used to describe any member of a reigning family who retains a right to succeed to a throne.
For example, King Edward VIII ceased to be a dynast of the House of Windsor following his abdication. In historical and monarchist references to reigning families, a "dynast" is a family member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchy's rules still in force. For example, after the 1914 assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his morganatic wife Duchess Sophie von Hohenberg, their son Duke Maximilian was bypassed for the Austro-Hungarian throne because he was not a Habsburg dynast. Since the abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Duke Maximilian and his descendants have not been considered the rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position; the term "dynast" is sometimes used only to refer to agnatic descendants of a realm's monarchs, sometimes to include those who hold succession rights through cognatic royal descent. The term can therefore describe distinct sets of people. For example, David Armstrong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon, a nephew of Queen Elizabeth II through her sister Princess Margaret, is in the line of succession to the British crown.
On the other hand, the German aristocrat Prince Ernst August of Hanover, a male-line descendant of King George III of the United Kingdom, possesses no legal British name, titles or styles. He was born in the line of succession to the British throne and was bound by Britain's Royal Marriages Act 1772 until it was repealed when the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 took effect on 26 March 2015. Thus, he requested and obtained formal permission from Queen Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco in 1999. Yet, a clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time, stipulating that dynasts who
Mestwin I, Duke of Pomerania
Mestwin I was regent of Pomerelia from about 1205 until his death. Mestwin was a member of the Samborides dynasty, the son of Duke Sobiesław of Gdańsk and younger brother of Sambor I, whom he succeeded in Pomerelia by appointment of the Polish High Duke Władysław III Spindleshanks. In the tables of Oliwa Abbey, he is recorded as pacificus; as Mestwin I, dei gracia princeps in Gdanzk, he had founded a convent of nuns, the castellany of Białogarda at the border with the Pomeranian Lands of Schlawe and Stolp on the Łeba river, several villages between the rivers Radunia and Słupia. After King Valdemar II of Denmark had conquered the southern coast of the Baltic Sea with Gdanzk during a crusade against the Old Prussians, Duke Mestwin in 1210 had to accept Danish overlordship, but was able to free himself again the next year, he was married to Swinisława, maybe a daughter of Polish High Duke Mieszko III the Old also referred to as a daughter of Duke Ratibor I of Pomerania. They had eight children: Mirosława, married Bogislaw II, Duke of Pomerania at Stettin Swietopelk II, Duke of Pomerania, succeeded his father as Duke of Pomerelia, from 1227 of Pomerelia-Gdańsk Jadwiga, married Duke Władysław Odonic of Greater Poland Witosława, prioress of Żukowo Abbey Warcisław, Duke at Świecie from 1227 Sambor II, Duke at Lubiszewo from 1233 Ratibor, Duke at Białogard from 1233 Milosława, nun at Żukowo Abbey List of Pomeranian duchies and dukes Pomerania during the High Middle Ages Specific General Brown Mason, John.
The Danzig Dilemma: a Study in Peacemaking by Compromise. Oxford University Press. Hirsch, Theodor. Scriptores rerum Prussicarum: Die Geschichtsquellen der preussischen Vorzeit. S. Hirzel. Theodor Hirsch, Max Töppen, Ernst Gottfried Wilhelm Strehlke: Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum: Die Geschichtsquellen der preussischen Vorzeit Max Perlbach, "Mestwin I. Herzog von Pomerellen", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 21, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 503–504
