Jadwiga (Polish: [jadˈviɡa] ; 1373/1374 – 17 July 1399), also known as Hedwig (from German, Hungarian: Hedvig), was Queen of the Kingdom of Poland, as well as its last hereditary ruler. Crowned "King", to highlight her sovereign status, she reigned from 16 October 1384 until her death. Born in Buda, she was the youngest daughter of Louis I of Hungary and Elizabeth of Bosnia. Jadwiga was a member of the Capetian House of Anjou and had forebears among the Polish Piasts.
In 1375, Louis I of Hungary planned for Jadwiga to marry William, Duke of Austria, to whom she was symbolically married in 1378; she subsequently lived in Vienna from 1378 to 1380. Louis is sometimes thought to have regarded her and William as his favoured successors in Hungary after the 1378 death of her eldest sister, Catherine of Hungary, since the following year the Polish nobility had pledged their homage to Louis I's second daughter, Mary, and her fiancé, Sigismund of Luxembourg. However, in 1382, Louis I died and his widow, Elizabeth of Bosnia, had Mary crowned "King of Hungary". Sigismund of Luxembourg tried to take control of Poland, but the Polish nobility countered that they would only be obedient to a daughter of Louis I, provided she settled in Poland. Elizabeth then chose Jadwiga to reign in Poland, but did not send her to Kraków to be crowned. During the interregnum, Siemowit IV, Duke of Masovia, became a candidate for the Polish throne. The nobility of Greater Poland favoured him and proposed that he marry Jadwiga. However, Lesser Poland's nobility opposed him, and they persuaded Elizabeth to send Jadwiga to Poland.
Jadwiga was crowned "King" in Poland's capital, Kraków, on 16 October 1384. With her mother's consent, Jadwiga's advisors opened negotiations with Władysław II Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania, concerning his potential marriage to Jadwiga. Władysław II Jagiełło, who was a pagan, signed the Union of Krewo, pledging to convert to Catholicism and to promote the conversion of his pagan subjects. Meanwhile, William hastened to Kraków, hoping to make his childhood wedding with Jadwiga valid by consummation of their union, but the Polish nobles expelled him in late August 1385.
Władysław II Jagiełło (Jogaila), who took the Catholic baptismal name Władysław, married Jadwiga on 15 February 1386, after she renounced her union with William. Legend says that she had agreed to marry him only after a lengthy prayer, seeking divine inspiration. Jogaila, now styled in Polish as Władysław II Jagiełło, was crowned King of Poland on 4 March 1386 as Jadwiga's co-ruler. Władysław II Jagiełło worked closely with his wife in that role. In any case, her real political power was limited. She remained passive when the rebellious nobles of the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia murdered her mother in early 1387. After that, Jadwiga marched into the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, which had been under Hungarian rule, and persuaded most of the inhabitants to become subjects of the Polish Crown. She mediated between her husband's quarrelling kin and between Poland and the Teutonic Order.
After her sister Mary died in 1395, Jadwiga and Władysław II Jagiełło laid claim to Hungary against the widowed Sigismund of Luxembourg, but the Hungarian lords did not support their claim. Jadwiga died four years later due to postpartum complications. As her only daughter predeceased her, the Queen was the last hereditary monarch of Poland, and with her death, the throne of Poland became elective. In 1997, she was canonised by the Catholic Church.
Jadwiga was born in Buda, the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary. She was the third and youngest daughter of Louis I, King of Hungary and Poland, and his second wife, Elizabeth of Bosnia. Both her grandmothers were Polish princesses, connecting her to the native Piast dynasty of Poland. Polish historian Oscar Halecki concluded in his posthumously published work (1991) that Jadwiga's "genealogical tree clearly shows that [she] had more Polish blood than any other". She was probably born between 3 October 1373 and 18 February 1374. She was named after her distant ancestor, Saint Hedwig of Silesia, who was especially venerated in the Hungarian royal court at the time of her birth.
King Louis I, who had not fathered any sons, wanted to ensure the right of his daughters to inherit his realms. Therefore, European royals regarded his three daughters as especially attractive brides. Leopold III, Duke of Austria, proposed his eldest son, William, to Jadwiga already on 18 August 1374. The envoys of the Polish nobles acknowledged that one of Louis's daughters would succeed him in Poland after he confirmed and extended their liberties in the Privilege of Koszyce on 17 September 1374. They took an oath of loyalty to Catherine on Louis I's demand.
Louis I agreed to give Jadwiga in marriage to William of Austria on 4 March 1375. The children's sponsalia de futuro, or "provisional marriage", was celebrated at Hainburg on 15 June 1378. The ceremony established the legal framework for the consummation of the marriage without any further ecclesiastical act as soon as they both reached the age of maturity. Duke William agreed that Jadwiga would only receive Treviso, a town that was to be conquered from the Republic of Venice, as dowry from her father. After the ceremony, Jadwiga stayed in Austria for almost two years; she mainly lived in Vienna.
Catherine died in late 1378. Louis I persuaded the most influential Polish lords to swear an oath of loyalty to her younger sister, Mary, in September 1379. She was betrothed to Sigismund of Luxemburg, a great-grandson of Casimir III the Great, who had been Louis I's predecessor on the Polish throne. The "promised marriage" of Jadwiga and William was confirmed at their fathers' meeting in Zólyom (now Zvolen in Slovakia) on 12 February 1380. Hungarian lords also approved the document, implying that Jadwiga and William were regarded as her father's successors in Hungary.
A delegation of the Polish lords and clergy paid formal homage to Sigismund of Luxembourg as their future king on 25 July 1382. The Poles believed that Louis also planned to persuade the Hungarian lords and prelates to accept Jadwiga and William of Austria as his heirs in Hungary. However, he died on 10 September 1382. Jadwiga was present at her father's death bed.
Accession negotiations (1382–1384)
Jadwiga's sister, Mary, was crowned king of Hungary five days after their father's death. With the ceremony, their ambitious mother secured the right to govern Hungary on her twelve-year-old daughter's behalf instead of Mary's fiancé, Sigismund. Sigismund could not be present at Mary's coronation, because Louis I had sent him to Poland to crush a rebellion. After he learnt of Louis I's death, he adopted the title "Lord of the Kingdom of Poland", demanding oaths of loyalty from the towns in Lesser Poland. On 25 November, the nobles of Greater Poland assembled at Radomsko and decided to obey nobody but the daughter of the late king, as she would settle in Poland. On their initiative, the noblemen of Lesser Poland passed a similar agreement in Wiślica on 12 December. Queen Elizabeth sent her envoys to the assembled lords and forbade them to swear an oath of loyalty to anyone other than one of her daughters, thus invalidating the oath of loyalty that the Polish noblemen had sworn to Sigismund on the late King Louis's demand.
Both Elizabeth's daughters had been engaged to foreign princes (Sigismund and William, respectively) unpopular in Poland. Polish lords who were opposed to a foreign monarch regarded the members of the Piast dynasty as possible candidates to the Polish throne. Queen Elizabeth's uncle Władysław the White had already attempted to seize Poland during Louis's reign. However, he had taken monastic vows and settled in a Benedictine abbey in Dijon in Burgundy. Antipope Clement VII, whom King Louis I had refused to recognise against Pope Urban VI, released Władysław II from his vows, but he did not leave his monastery. Meanwhile, Siemowit IV, Duke of Masovia, appeared as a more ambitious candidate. He was especially popular among the nobility and townspeople of Greater Poland.