Henry Valois's court and elective kingship in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

ENHenry Valois (1551–89) was elected king of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1573 and arrived in Poland in January 1574. After five months, Henry fled Poland–Lithuania upon inheriting the French throne from his brother, Charles IX. As Henry III of France, he was branded a violent tyrant, who allowed his mignons to run the kingdom and isolated himself from his subjects. Historians have done much to rehabilitate Henry's reputation, but his first experience of kingship in the Commonwealth has been neglected in these reassessments. This article uses the previously unstudied treasury accounts of Henry's Polish court to re-examine his experience of the Polish–Lithuanian elective, parliamentary monarchy as crucial to the development of his characteristic style of kingship and court. Some of these practices were a response to the challenges posed by the Polish political system to a newly elected king. This allows us to recover a lost political connection between Poland and France. Secondly, the article demonstrates Henry's active engagement in the Polish–Lithuanian politics, challenging the narrative that he was a passive king anticipating his return to Paris. Instead, Henry planned to cement his rule in Poland by mounting his own faction and pursuing a bold diplomatic agenda.

• Busimųjų socialinių pedagogių ir socialinių darbuotojų dažniausiai naudojamos streso įveikimo priemonės. Sportinį darbingumą lemiantys veiksniai 2015, 8, 207-212.
• Common wealth, common good: the politics of virtue in early modern Poland-Lithuania.. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2015. 189 p.
• Res publica redefined?: the Polish-Lithuanian transition period of the 1560s and 1570s in the context of European state formation processes. Frankfurt am Main : Peter Lang, 2016. 304 p.
• Sharing political space: the royal court and the Polish-Lithuanian Sejm in the seventeenth century.. European history quarterly 2025, 55, 3, 369-395.
• Sportuojančių studentų (vyrų ir moterų) taikomi streso įveikimo būdai. Ugdymas. Kūno kultūra. Sportas 2009, 3 (74), 28-33.
• Studentų sveikatos ugdymas Lietuvos aukštosiose mokyklose: galimybės ir problemos.. Studijos šiuolaikinėje visuomenėje 2012, 3(1), 185-193.
• Šiaulių universiteto antro kurso studentų gyvensenos aspektai. Jaunųjų mokslininkų darbai 2011, 2 (31), 58-62.
• The Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania: international diplomacy on the European periphery (15th-18th Century) : a study of peace treaties followed by annotated documents. Leiden ; Brill, 2011. xxxii, 1049, [48] p.
• The Formation of the Polish-Lithuanian monarchy in the sixteenth century. Polish-Lithuanian monarchy in European context, c. 1500-1795. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. P. 58-81.
• The Oxford history of Poland-Lithuania. Vol. 1. The making of the Polish-Lithuanian union, 1385-1569.. New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2015. XXI, 592 p.
• The Polish-Lithuanian monarchy in European context, c. 1500-1795. Basingstoke : Palgrave, 2001. XIX, 249 p.