Traidenis: Some Peripheral Remarks on the Beginning of His Reign

Abstract

 ruler of Lithuania. Some of them were touched upon in the studies of Artūras Dubonis; the scheme presented in this article complements the hypotheses he formulated, some of which are supported and some expanded. The scheme proposed by Artūras Dubonis is as follows: Shvarn received Navahrudak from Vaišelga (as Roman Danylovich had received it from Mindaugas earlier), but Navahrudak was on the periphery of Shvarn’s domain. Dynastic ties are important here, since Shvarn was the husband of Vaišelga’s sister. Around 1266, he was already established there. In 1266/1267, Vaišelga abdicated the throne and retreated to Volhynia, but he remained involved in politics and did not confine himself to the walls of monasteries. Vaišelga Mindaugaitis continued to be a participant in the political process. After the death of Shvarn, a war broke out between Traidenis and Vasilko Romanovich.
In order to clarify this scheme and to highlight the reasoning behind it, some fragments of the Halych-Volhynian Chronicle were analysed. First of all, the last knowledge of Shvarn Danylovich in this chronicle was explored. It was found that the last two messages about him consist of a coherent text. The story of Vaišelga was artificially inserted in order to justify Shvarn’s claims to Lithuania. This confirms Dubonis’s statement that Shvarn was already dead at the time of Vaišelga’s murder.
The war between Vasilko Romanovich and Traidenis is linked not to the death of Shvarn, although we can see the consistency of the narrative of the chronicle, but to the death of Vaišelga. The composition of the chronicle text, when the story of Vaišelga was inserted into the story of the last years of Shvarn’s reign and his death, broke the logic of the story. Therefore, a connection can be seen not between the death of Vaišelga but between the death of Shvarn and the beginning of the fighting between Vasilko Romanovich and Traidenis.
One last important point is that although the author of the Halych-Volhynia Chronicle speaks negatively about Traidenis, using the darkest analogies, he nowhere mentions that Traidenis might be a usurper. This shows that Traidenis
gained power legitimately. Only Vaišelga could have legitimately handed power over to Traidenis: it is probable that he managed the problem of Lithuania in the same way he had managed the issue of Navahrudak. The fact that Vaišelga transferred power to Traidenis when he took control of Lithuania shows that they may have been closely related. This would also be evidenced by the fact that an avenger of Vaišelga, i.e., a person who was much closer to Vaišelga than Traidenis himself, appeared in Lithuania after Traidenis’s death.