Life
Leszek Czarny was the eldest son from the marriage of Duke Casimir I of Kuyavia to his second wife Constance of Wrocław, daughter of High Duke Henry II the Pious from the Silesian branch of the Piast dynasty. His nickname, the Black (in Latin Niger) appears for the first time in the 14th century Chronicle. In 1257, after the death of his mother, his father made his third marriage, to Euphrosyne of Opole, which soon became a source of conflict in the family. Leszek's new stepmother drove her husband's previous children from their inheritance, among them the later Polish king Władysław I the Elbow-high. Some chronicles accuse the duchess of attempting to poison them.
In 1261 his father, stuck in an ongoing conflict with Duke Bolesław the Pious of Greater Poland, had to cede the Duchy of Sieradz to Leszek. Though he was the eldest son, the Duchy of Kuyavia proper passed to his younger brother Ziemomysł after their father's death in 1267. Leszek himself was designated to succeed Bolesław V the Chaste, cousin of his father, as High Duke in the Seniorate Province of Kraków. After Ziemomysł was expelled by Bolesław the Pious due to his alliance with the Pomerelian duke Sambor II, Leszek also became Duke of Kuyavia in 1273, but allowed his brother to return five years later.
Leszek assumed the throne at Kraków in 1279. During his government there was a third Mongol raid led by Nogai Khan against Poland in 1287.
He married Gryfina, daughter of the Rurikid prince Rostislav Mikhailovich, who was received in the court of the King Béla IV of Hungary. The monarch later gave one of his daughters as wife to Rostislav and entrusted to him the administration of the region of Slavonia in the Hungarian Medieval Kingdom. The marriage of Leszek and Gryfina turned out to be an unhappy one, as she publicly blamed her husband to never consummating it. The couple had no children, and eventually were forced to escape to Hungary during a Tatar invasion.
Read more about this topic: Leszek II The Black
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