# Talk:Jadwiga of Poland

I see certain people decided to be difficult about this in the past.
As the Polish article makes clear, she was referred to as queen (królowa, regina) all the time. The "king" thing may have been a noteworthy item at the time of coronation, but clearly people did call her "queen" most of the time once they got over the shock of having coronated one. 
As for "Jadwiga", this is just the modern Polish way of spelling the name Hedwig. 
In English, "Hedwig of Poland" seems to see just as much usage as "Jadwiga of Poland". The two are interchangeable, as in "Hedwig of Kalisz (Polish:  Jadwiga Bolesławówna)". 
See also WP:UCN. --dab (𒁳) 08:03, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
It may be even worse than this. 
The "Jadwiga, king of Poland" meme on the internet is exclusively derived from Wikipedia.
On google books, "Hedvigis, Rex Poloniae" gets three hits, all of them Polish-language books, beginning in 1989 (not a single hit for the spelling Hedvigis, Rex Polonie given here).
At the same time, Hedvigis, Regina Poloniae gets 783 hits, plus another 83 for Hedwigis Regina Poloniae. 
This has all the hallmarks of made-up nonsense incubated via the wiki.
--dab (𒁳) 08:19, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

You are certainly right. I have been correcting this nonsense ever since I got Maria Theresa to GA status. I believe that article too insisted that she was king rather than queen. See also Irene of Athens. Could you please link to the meme you mentioned? Surtsicna (talk) 13:03, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
Volunteer Marek and Cebr1979, I know that she was crowned "king", similarly to her sister, Mary, who was crowned "king" of Hungary. However, would you refer to a reliable source, published in English, which refers to her as King of Poland? Borsoka (talk) 06:05, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
That was easy.Cebr1979 (talk) 06:08, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
This one's my favourite.Cebr1979 (talk) 06:10, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Cebr1979, please read what reliable source means for WP purposes. Popular literature and self-published material do not qualify as such. Borsoka (talk) 06:15, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Please read that the article itself is already sourced and, just because they are not sources you can read for free online, doesn't mean you can just ignore them.Cebr1979 (talk) 06:18, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
(and you don't need to notify me every time you make a comment, I'll see it regardless)Cebr1979 (talk) 06:20, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Would you specify what reliable source (published in English) in the article refers to her as King of Poland?  Borsoka (talk) 06:23, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
You need to be told that the little blue 2 inside brackets after the first time she's referred to as "King of Poland" means a ref is there if you click the blue 2?Cebr1979 (talk) 06:26, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Oh. I see now you deleted the ref. Pret-ty sneak-y.Cebr1979 (talk) 06:28, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Limiting ourselves to only English language sources is more or less confined to question of how to render somebody's name or a locale. Not for factual information. For that there is no restriction on what language sources we can use. Hence, a Polish source for the fact that she was a "king" is perfectly fine.
But if you want English language sources those are trivial to find: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] etc.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:40, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Problems with this version: [8] are that sources actually don't refer to her as "Queen regnant". Worse, it's quite likely our readers won't know what a "queen regnant" is (I'm not quite clear on it myself). It's wiki linked, but the link just takes you to "List of Polish monarch" which only adds to the confusion.
"Queen regnant" might (to the extent I understand what is meant by this) be simply incorrect. Jadwiga was crowned "king". An example of "queen regnant" would be Anna Jagiellonka. These are different things and certainly the people of the time felt that these had different political and legal ramifications.Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:57, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Let's see your sources: (1) Jadwiga (Hedwig) d'Anjou ... Queen of Poland (!) (page 214); (2) Jadwiga "Maiden King" of Poland (not King of Poland and with apostrophes) (3) ... crowned "King of Poland" (with apostrophes, and she was  c r o w n e d  king) (4) ... called the first female "king" of Poland (with apostrophes, and she was c a l l e d  king) (5) ... was crowned "king of Poland"  (with apostrophes, and she was c r o w n e d  king) (6) she was brought to Kraków to be crowned "King of Poland" (with apostrophes, and she was c r o w n e d  king) (7) her official title was "king" (with apostrophes). Consequently (1) none of the cited sources state that she was King of Poland (because 6 of the 7 sources emphasize that she was crowned or called or titled king; (2) all cited sources use apostrophes ("...") when referring to her as king. Sorry, I do not understand why do you want to ignore the cited sources? Borsoka (talk) 15:59, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
I'm sorry but it's hard to keep assuming good faith here (your resumption of the edit war right after you were reported, warned and narrowly escaped a block doesn't help either). You object to her being referred to as "king" because sources say that she was "c r o w n e d king"? How does that make sense.
And the apostrophe is there for emphasis - the writers realize that it's an unusual situation so they emphasize the noun king to make sure the reader understands it's not a typo.
She was crowned king of Poland. Her title was "king of Poland". She was king of Poland. You can try twisting that how you want but that's what it is and that's what sources say. Wikilawyering won't help.Volunteer Marek (talk) 16:27, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
And your "was "King", that is Queen regnant of Poland" is pure OR and incorrect to boot. She was "queen regnant" of Poland between 1382 and 1384. She was "king" from 1384 until her death. Can we be precise and accurate here? After all this is an encyclopedia.Volunteer Marek (talk) 16:31, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Would you refer to the reliable source which states that she was King of Poland without using the apostrophes? Would you refer to the reliable source which states that she was queen regnant of Poland between 1382 and 1384? Borsoka (talk) 21:28, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Would I? What does that mean?
Are you asking me to provide such sources? Well, first, the use of the apostrophe in sources has already been explained to you. And a source which calls her "king" without apostrophes is already in the article. So why are you asking? But fine, here's another [9]. And here's another [10].
As to her being "queen regnant" between 1382 and 1384, I don't really care about that.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:04, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
Jadwiga should be referenced as the "King" in the infobox because she was the King of Poland.-- Sleyece (talk) 19:38, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I live in a country (Hungary)  where Jadwiga's elder sister, Mary, was crowned "king" two years before Jadwiga's coronation. In Hungary, Mary is never mentioned as "king" and I have not met anybody who would change her title from queen to king in the article dedicated to her. So I would like to understand why the fact that Jadwiga was crowned "king" is so important for some editors. Borsoka (talk) 17:34, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Dear User:Borsoka: Sorry about that. The simplest explanation is that this page has gotten a lot more views, average 211 per day over the past year or so [11] than Mary's has (average 59 per day). [12].
The WP article about the Other doesn't go into this, but Otherness has been discussed in regard to Eastern and Central Europe in books and scholarly articles.
That article doesn't mention people's fascination with what they see as the bizarre customs of the Others, but we all know it's there.
Please carry on your good work. Regards, Novickas (talk) 15:13, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for your message. I was obviously unclear. I would like to know the reason of several attempts to mention Jadwiga as "king", because her sister (who was also crowned "king") has never been styled as such neither by WP editors nor by historians. Borsoka (talk) 02:02, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
Well, Christina, Queen of Sweden was also officially crowned king (rex) as that article notes. But not in the lead. There's been some discussion about that, see
[13], including a suggestion to change the article title, but it never needed an RFC like this one did. As far as I can tell there weren't any edit wars over it. I'm thinking that's because Sweden doesn't seem particularly exotic to most Westerners and so there would be fewer people (that is, editors) interested in the "weird" aspect of a woman being crowned king. Also, Queen Christina (film) was very popular. 
So it's exotic - notice the use of "and even some European countries" used male titles in the queen regnant article - and gets more than 3 times the readers than Mary does, which increases the chances that people will want to emphasize it. But those are just my theories and maybe it's not a good idea to speculate too much about editors' motivations. People get angry really quickly here. You could make a case that it's undue weight in the lead for this article. It's not in the lead of the Britannica article [14].
Have you thought about posing this question at WP:Reference desk/Humanities? There's some very knowledgeable people there. Regards, Novickas (talk) 14:14, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
P.S. I just looked at the traffic statistics for queen regnant, where Jadwiga and her male title are mentioned early on - it's been averaging 469 views/day for the past year or so. That might be creating some traffic here. Novickas (talk) 14:32, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
Jadwiga was king before she was married to Jagiełło, after marriage she ruled the country on the same level as her husband, also as king (as two kings at a time, as a married couple) was so untimely death of Jadwiga.
We Poles call her a king because the early Polish law did not foresee giving the Queen the right to inherit the throne. In our law the Queen did not rule, she was only the king's wife. That is why it is so important to us. To distinguish Jadwiga from the rest.
Jadwiga była królem zanim wyszła za mąż za Jagiełłe, po małżeństwie rządziła krajem na równi z mężem, również jako król (tak dwoje krółów na raz, jako małżeństwo) było tak do przedwczesnej śmierci Jadwigi.
My Polacy nazywamy Ją królem ponieważ uwczesne polskie prawo nie przewidywało nadanie kobiecie prawa dziedziczenia tronu. W naszym prawie Królowa nie rządziła, była jedynie żoną króla. Dlatego to dla nas takie ważne. Aby odróżnić Jadwigę od reszty. DawidRafał (talk) 00:08, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but this is the English version of WP, and in English language female "kings" are styled queens. As it was previously mentioned, there were many female monarchs who were crowned "kings" (including Jadwiga's sister, Mary, Queen of Hungary), but they are not mentioned as kings in English WP. Borsoka (talk) 07:18, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Oskar Halecki, the author of the most comprehensive English-language biography of Jadwiga, notes that she was crowned king but consistently calls her queen. That is what this Wikipedia article should do too. There is no basis in English-language historiography for calling her king of Poland. It is a curiosity that does not need to be highlighted in the infobox. Surtsicna (talk) 11:37, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

From the lead: Jadwiga was crowned "king" in Poland's capital Danial Bass (talk) 10:27, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, he was crowned "rex" of Poland just like her elder sister Mary had been crowned "rex" of Hungary in 1382. Borsoka (talk) 10:53, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
Hi Danial Bass, I can confirm. Mary and Jadwiga was daugthers of King Louis I of Hungary. Having no male siblings, Mary was crowned "king" of Hungary on 17 September 1382, seven days after Louis the Great's death. She became a “male” by law, because it would be impossible to became a queen instead of a king in Hungary in that medieval times. But she was too young and remained unpopular and it was many inheritence conflict in that time, finally her husban  Sigismund became the king together with Mary. OrionNimrod (talk) 06:20, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

English version incorrectly states that Jadwiga was the last Polish hereditary monarch which isn’t true. Her marriage with Jagiello started new dynasty in Poland, Jagiellonow, which lasted almost 2 centuries ~2025-33799-51 (talk) 16:31, 15 November 2025 (UTC)