When people think of Poland’s kings, they probably imagine Polish names and dynasties. But in 1573, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth who had been born in France and had spent his life at the French royal court.

His name was Henry de Valois, a French prince and the son of King Henry II of France and Catherine de’ Medici. After the death of the last Jagiellonian king, Sigismund II Augustus, Poland and Lithuania faced a major political question. Instead of automatically passing the crown to a royal heir, the nobility took part in a free election to choose the next monarch.

A French Prince Wins the Polish Crown

On May 11, 1573, Polish and Lithuanian nobles elected Henry de Valois as their new king. He became the first monarch chosen through the Commonwealth’s new system of free royal elections.

Henry had to accept important limits on royal power before taking the throne. The Henrician Articles established principles that future elected kings would also have to respect, including restrictions on the monarch and important political rights for the nobility. He also accepted separate personal commitments known as the pacta conventa.

Henry eventually arrived in Poland in January 1574 and was crowned at Wawel Cathedral in Kraków on February 21.

Henry’s time as king was incredibly short.

Only a few months after his arrival, his older brother, King Charles IX of France, died. Henry suddenly had another throne waiting for him. Rather than remain in Poland, he secretly left the country in June 1574 and traveled back toward France to claim the French crown.

Polish nobles wanted him to return, but he never did.

Henry became King Henry III of France, while his brief Polish reign became one of the strangest episodes in the country’s royal history. He remained formally connected to the Polish crown until the election of his successor, Stephen Báthory, in 1575.

Why His Story Still Matters

Henry’s story was about more than a foreign prince briefly sitting on Poland’s throne. His election marked the beginning of a new era in which Poland’s nobility would choose its monarch.

For Poland, the French king who left almost as quickly as he arrived became an unlikely symbol of the Commonwealth’s unusual political system. A man born in France had become King of Poland through a royal election in which the nobility chose the monarch.