Qadar Khan as Khan of the Silver Horde and Khagan of Poland
[1] Born sometime in the early 1200s as the son of Ögedei Khan, the Great Khagan of the Mongol Empire, and a concubine, Qadar Khan was afforded the best childhood a Mongol Prince was entitled to. Much of his early life is unattested, as the Mongols had scarce resources at the time devoted to the solitary prince, but he was known to be militarily adept at the very least. When the time came for the Mongol Invasion of Hungary, Qadar Khan was chosen alongside Baidar Khan and Orda Khan to lead a diversionary force into Poland at the age of 25. The Invasion of Poland went swimmingly, surprisingly and what was originally intended to be the sideshow became the main show as the forces of Henry II were not only defeated, but they completely fell apart, leading the interior of Poland to fall to the Mongols by 1241 after some protracted sieges.
Qadar Khan drove his armies all the way to Kraków which he captured and made the seat of the Khaganate of Poland, with himself as Khagan and with the city renamed Krakov, which was more in line with Mongol phonology. Though the Mongol Invasion of Hungary had failed, the invasion of Poland was a rousing success, and Qadar Khan settled down as his cousins returned to Mongolia to administer his new realm. The immediate problem was that the Polish subjects he now ruled over were envious of their new overlords and not very accepting of the Mongols, and the Mongol cavalry he commanded had a problem raiding any settlement they found heightening local resistance against his rule. From Silesia, Hungary, and the Holy Roman Empire, raids against his new nation continued frequently. Until 1245 he remained generally peaceful, administering his realm and slowly removing dissent against his rule in Poland. At the same time he was called back to Mongolia to elect a new Khagan of Mongolia, and during that time, his realm was attacked. He returned in 1246 to find his realm on the brink of collapsing with Bohemian and Silesian forces nearing Krakov. Qadar Khan rode to the outskirts of the city and with his detachment, encircled the incoming army and defeated the invasion, restoring the territorial sovereignty of the Khaganate of Poland.
To find temporary peace at least, Qadar Khan married Constance of Wrocław as his only wife - who was left widowed after her husband died in the fighting the year prior. Qadar Khan had indirectly also adopted monogamous marriage, slowly adopting some of the customs of the land that he now ruled over. Constance and Qadar found it hard to have affection with one another during the first years of their marriage - largely due to communication problems and differences in religion. Qadar Khan was a committed Tengri-Buddhist whilst Constance was a committed Christian. Nevertheless, they did come to have respect for one another in due time, and the couple would have five children in total, all of whom lived to adulthood. As Infighting befell the Mongols in the Steppe, Qadar turned his back on the homeland and finally adopted Poland as his home by 1250. Nevertheless, that didn't mean that he left all semblances of Mongol life behind. He invited Tengri-Buddhist missionaries from Mongolia, China, and Central Asia and settled them in Poland. Though he was tolerant of Christianity for the sake of administration and having no rebellions, his focus on Tengri-Buddhism did lead to a good amount of conversions in Poland under his rule, and by the time of his death, all major noble families in Poland had adopted Buddhism to varying degrees, and syncretism between Buddhism and Christianity had become rife by the end of his reign. Mongol loanwords began to enter Polish as well over time.
Of course, Qadar Khan did have a hard time ruling despite his tolerant views that ensured his reign survived. Daniel of Galicia's Rebellion from 1256 - 1263 nearly captured Krakov and the Invasion of Poland by Bohemia from 1267 - 1274 nearly dethroned Qadar both times, but both times Qadar managed to win using military wit and using his charisma to at least instill some values of loyalty to him in the populace. He had also reined in his Mongol troops who had settled down in Poland, making sacking and raiding much more controlled than before. When he died in 1279 with his wife and children by his side, he died a peaceful man having achieved a long-lasting legacy at least within Europe.
[2] The eldest son of Qadar Khan and Constance of Wroclaw, Baidar Khan was raised more by his father than his mother, and became a devoted Buddhist, though paying some lip service to the faith of his mother for the sake of legitimacy, getting himself baptized and crowned by Christian priests as
Piotr I, King of Poland. Despite this, Baidar's main claims to fame are the patronage of Buddhist monasteries established all across the lands of the Silver Horde, the migration and patronage of Jewish communities in the region, and the conversion of Lithuania and the Baltic regions, which he would take over from the German knightly orders in the first years of his reign. Under Baidar's rule, the Lithuanians and Baltic peoples would begin to rapidly convert to Buddhism and form a major loyalist faction to the khan, even as Christian heresies proliferated in the Silver Horde's lands thanks to the khan's tolerance of all religions.
In the middle of the khan's reign, the Silver Horde raided deep into the Holy Roman Empire in a preemptive strike against an incipient crusade, and it was during this time that the Silver Horde first started bringing in Ashkenazi Jews to settle some of the emptied cities of the region (or perhaps, more accurately, this period first saw Ashkenazi Jews flee into the lands of the Silver Horde as German peasants started committing pogroms against them).
To secure his rule over the northern lands, Baidar Khan married a Buddhist-converted daughter of the pagan Lithuanian Grand Duke
Mindaugas, who had sworn fealty to the khan, in 1283, and the couple had many children. By 1313, the khan passed, leaving the khanate in the hands of Adai Khan.
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Altan Khan's official portrait upon ascension
Born in 1285 to Baidar Khan, Altan ascended to the throne of the Khaganate of Poland and Khanate of the Silver Horde at the age of 28. Where his father had been more of an administrative guy, Altan Khan took after his Lithuanian heritage and their more warlike tendencies. After he reached his majority, he was the leading commander of the Silver Horde's military forces against any external foe that would try to fight against the might of the Silver Horde. Upon his ascension as Khan and Khagan, he immediately came into conflict with the Golden Horde in the East, with their Khan - Altan Khan's sixth cousin once removed - trying to assert a claim to the Polish Throne as well. Seeing that this was being scrutinized greatly by the European Powers with ideas of the conquest of Polish territory, Altan Khan quickly made a move, allying himself with the unlikely candidate - the Bohemians and marrying Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, securing his western flank. With the Habsburgs on the rise in Vienna, the Bohemians had now decided to make peace with the Silver Horde to focus on things close to home. Altan and Elizabeth would have three children who would grow into adulthood.
The War between the Golden Horde and the Silver Horde from 1313 - 1319 ended in a military stalemate for the most part, as while Altan had better tactics, the Golden Horde had more numbers in Russia. The war ended with the Silver Horde annexing Ruthenian Galicia from the Golden Horde instead, and not much else. While the Silver Horde Succession War hadn't been a rousing success for Altan Khan's military career, his exploits afterward would prove him worthy of his nickname 'the Dragon'. As Hungary warred itself between King Charles I of Hungary and the nation's powerful oligarchs, Stefan Uroš II Milutin of Belgrade officially asked for Polish support in 1320. Altan Khan was eager for more conquest and answered the call. His troops - an amalgamation of fast and hard cavalry tactics inherited from their Mongol heritage and the heavily armored heritage of Europe clashed down on the Pannonian plains in support of Stefan and the Vovoide of Transylvania against Charles I of Hungary. For two years, the Hungarians and the Poles would fight against each other indecisively but in 1323, when the two lead armies met with one another on the fields of Miskolc, Charles I miscalculated, and he was captured by Altan Khan whilst his army was routed. Altan Khan entered Buda without a fight afterward. To prevent their realms from entering the Mongol realm in Europe, even allied Stefan declared the independence of the Banate of Vojvodina and the Transylvanians declared their duchy to be independent. Viceroy of Croatia, John, Duke of Durrazo, and Charles I's cousin was declared King of Croatia. Altan was not ruffled and instead annexed Hungary proper and Slovakia into the Silver Horde. At the same time, to his north, the Teutons had started to raid into Northern Poland once again.
Deciding to end the Teuton threat once and for all, in 1325, the great Khan invaded Teutonic Prussia, and by 1328 was besieging Konigsberg at the head of a massive army. The next year, Konigsberg fell, and the Teutonic Order fled to Hamburg where the Hanseatic League gave them refuge. Nevertheless, Prussia had fallen to Altan Khan and was annexed into the Silver Horde as well. After 1329, Altan Khan mostly settled down to a peaceful life and administered the realm. In 1330 Buddhism was officially declared to be the State Religion after nearly a century of growing Buddhist influence in Polish society. Old Polish transitioned into Middle Polish with many Mongol loanwords and the language started to be written in the Mongol Script for official business as well. Altan Khan also shed most of the other hanging on of Mongolia and was the first Silver Horde Khan to call himself Polish declaring the Khaganate of Poland to be the primary title of the Horde. In 1331, after years of military jurisdiction, Hungary, Slovakia, and Prussia were directly integrated into the Silver Horde. In 1333, the Silesian Succession Crisis saw both Bohemia and the Silver Horde dividing the Duchy of Silesia in half, partitioning it with one another.
In 1335, at the age of 50, Altan Khan died, having expanded the Silver Horde to become twice as large. Upon his death, for his military prowess, he gained the moniker 'the Dragon'. He was succeeded to the Khaganate by_________.
[4] Alexander Khan, born in 1313 as the oldest of the three children of Altan Khan and his wife Elizabeth, was the first Khan of the Silver Horde to be given a "European" name, showing how the Silver Horde was increasingly adopting Polish culture and language during his reign. While his reign would be a fairly short-lived one, lasting five years before he would die from a sudden illness at the age of 27, in many ways, it would be a reign which would see a great deal of energy and vitality in the Khanate with the most notable achievements of Alexander Khan being the fall of Kiev to the Silver Horde with the Khaganate of Poland adding "Grand Prince of the Rus'" to his titles after the Fall of Kyiv. In addition, he would be notable for the marriage alliance he would forge with Andronicus III of Rhomania in which he would send off his sister to marry Andronicus III, tying the Palaiologos Dynasty with the Polish Ogodeids, and for his policy of enacting legal and administrative reforms to centralize the realm. Finally, he would be a ruler who would emphasize the Christian part of the Christo-Buddhist syncretism which marked the Silver Horde, something historians would argue was influenced by both his mother and his wife, Irene Palaiologina, daughter of Andronicus III, with whom he would have a single child before his death in 1340. In the aftermath of his death, Zolzaya Khatun would be acclaimed as Khayun of Poland, Queen of Hungary, and Grand Princess of Rus'.