House of Mindaugas

The House of Mindaugas was the first royal family of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, centered on Mindaugas, the first known and undoubted sovereign of Lithuania. He was crowned as King of Lithuania in 1253 and assassinated ten years later. His known family relations end with children; there is no data on his great-grandchildren or any relations with the Gediminids, a dynasty of sovereigns of Lithuania and Poland that started with Butigeidis ca. 1285 and ended with Sigismund II Augustus in 1572.

Historians have to make considerable assumptions trying to reconstruct the full family tree because of extremely scarce written sources about the early history of Lithuania. The matter is further complicated by the 16–17th century genealogies, most famously the Bychowiec Chronicle, that mixed legends and facts into one. The legends about Palemonids, a noble family from the Roman Empire who settled in Lithuania and gave rise to the Duchy, are quite popular and widespread in these genealogies. The real historical data comes from the Russian and Livonian chronicles, most important of these being the Hypatian Codex.

Mindaugas and his brother Dausprungas are first mentioned among the 5 elder dukes in a 1219 treaty with Galicia–Volhynia. Since at that time both brothers had to be relatively young, it implies that they inherited their high status. However, no written sources of the period talk about their father, except the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, which mentions in passing that he was a powerful Grand Duke (ein kunic grôß). Chronicles written in the 16–17th centuries gave him the name of Ryngold (Lithuanian: Rimgaudas) and made him part of the Palemonids' legends. Historian Edvardas Gudavičius argued that because the 1219 treaty mentioned two pairs of young brothers among the 5 elder dukes (Mindaugas and Dausprungas, Daujotas and Vilikaila), it was very likely that they were sons of powerful Lithuanian dukes Daugirutis and Stekšys, killed in 1213 and 1214.

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