Jadwiga of Poland
Queen of Poland (1384–1399)
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" (in regem Poloniae coronata) 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 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.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Jadwiga of Poland” as queen of Poland (1384–1399). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as queen of Poland (1384–1399). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q53449. VIAF identifies the subject as 268484049. The Library of Congress control number is n84211694. 7 of 8 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1373, 1374, 1399 and 1384.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jadwiga of Poland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.