WI:Lithuania converts to Orthodoxy in 1270's

[kasumigenx]

I remember that the son of Mindaugas is a devout Orthodox Christian but he is very religious and uninterested in ruling Lithuania, what if he wasn't like that and promoted Orthodoxy in Lithuania what would had happened to Lithuania?

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

I'm not sure, but you'll definitely need an even bigger, more menacing Golden Horde that has adopted Orthodox Christianity to pressure Lithuania to convert, and even then the Lithuanians will try to present itself as the better Orthodox state that the Rus' principalities under the Horde's control will rally.

 

[RGB]

You don't need an Orthodox Great Horde, what you need is a weak Poland and the Knights as the foremost menace.

Staying Orthodox and gaining allies among Russian principalities is more attractive then.

 

[kasumigenx]

You don't need an Orthodox Great Horde, what you need is a weak Poland and the Knights as the foremost menace.

Staying Orthodox and gaining allies among Russian principalities is more attractive then.

Poland is still divided on 1270's actually.

 

[Bee]

Civil war.

It's not that hard to predict. Vaisvilkas, son of Mindaugas, abdicated after revenging himself on his father's killers. He abdicated in favor of his brother-in-law, Svarnas. Svarnas would have been Christian, too, since he was a member of the ruling family of Halych, a Rus principality. He only ruled for a couple of years, because he couldn't hold on to power in the face of a pagan rising led by his successor, Traidenis.

It's hard to see thinks going any better for Vaisvilkas if he tried to keep the throne himself.

 

[kasumigenx]

Civil war.

It's not that hard to predict. Vaisvilkas, son of Mindaugas, abdicated after revenging himself on his father's killers. He abdicated in favor of his brother-in-law, Svarnas. Svarnas would have been Christian, too, since he was a member of the ruling family of Halych, a Rus principality. He only ruled for a couple of years, because he couldn't hold on to power in the face of a pagan rising led by his successor, Traidenis.

It's hard to see thinks going any better for Vaisvilkas if he tried to keep the throne himself.

But what if he was able to pull a Jogaila and put a Russian principality in union with Lithuania.

 

[Bee]

The pagans won't fold without a fight, so he'll need a very strong Russian ally to succeed, i.e., not any Russian principality will do. I also don't know whether a female could inherit a Rus throne in the 1200s which has to happen for a Jogaila parallel.

 

[ByzantineLover]

A very strong Russian ally... Novgorod, maybe? They managed to survive the Mongol invasions and, under Alexander Nevsky, defeat the Teutonic Knights.

 

[Bee]

Possible. Novgorod didn't have its own dynasty; it imported its princes from outside. It later elected at least one Lithuanian to the post, so Vaisvilkas could gain Novgorod directly that way.