Kingdom of Poland

The Kingdom of Poland traces its founding as a Christian monarchy to the coronation of Boleslaw I the Brave as the first King of Poland in 1025, building on the earlier Piast dynasty state established by Mieszko I, who had accepted Christianity for his realm in 966. The kingdom's status fluctuated between a unified monarchy and a fragmented set of duchies in the centuries that followed, before being reunified under Wladyslaw I Lokietek in the early fourteenth century and strengthened by his son Casimir III the Great, who expanded royal authority, codified law and founded the University of Krakow in 1364. The kingdom entered a lasting dynastic union with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1386 and grew into a major regional power under the Jagiellonian dynasty, a union that was ultimately formalized into a single Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by the Union of Lublin in 1569, after which the separate Kingdom of Poland continued to exist as the Commonwealth's larger constituent partner until the Commonwealth's own dissolution in 1795.