page_title: Anna Jagiellon
section_title: Polish Succession
hierarchical_section_title: Anna Jagiellon / Reign / Polish Succession
context_page_description: Anna Jagiellon was Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania from 1575 to 1586.
  Daughter of Polish King Sigismund I the Old and Italian duchess Bona Sforza, Anna received multiple proposals, but remained unmarried until the age of 52. After the death of King Sigismund II Augustus, her brother and the last male member of the Jagiellonian dynasty, her hand was sought by pretenders to the Polish throne to maintain the dynastic tradition. Along with her then-fiancé Stephen Báthory, Anna was elected as co-ruler in the 1576 royal election of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Their marriage was a formal arrangement and distant.
  While Báthory was preoccupied with the Livonian War, Anna spent her time on local administrative matters and several construction projects, incluiding the city wall Stara Prochownia to protect Sigismund Augustus Bridge. After her husband's death in December 1586, Anna had the opportunity to claim the throne again, but instead promoted her nephew Sigismund III Vasa as the next ruler and established the House of Vasa on the Polish throne for the next eighty years.
context_section_description: After her husband's death in December 1586, Anna had the opportunity to claim the political power in the Commonwealth for herself as she was an elected queen, but instead resolved to promote her niece Anna Vasa or her nephew Sigismund Vasa, the only children of her beloved sister Catherine and King John III of Sweden. Her initial plan, formulated while her husband was still alive, was to wed Anna Vasa to one of the nephews of Stephen Báthory and promote the couple to the throne. However, this plan didn't gain support among the nobility and she then planned to sponsor Sigismund Vasa to the throne. As a back up plan, she pursued marriage between Anna Vasa and Maximilian III, Archduke of Austria, the other likely candidate to the throne. Initially, King John III didn't want to let his only son and heir out of his sight, but Queen Anna managed to convince him. In her campaigns, she wrote numerous letters and used her wealth to gain crucial support from Zamoyski, who was married to Griselda Báthory and held his own ambitions for the throne. Sigismund Vasa was elected king on 19 August 1587. He and his sister Anna arrived to Poland in October 1587.
caption: Anna's nephew and successor, Sigismund Vasa, in his youth.
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