Gediminid

The Gediminids ruled the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century and were named after Grand Duke Gediminas, their ancestry later traced to the shadowy duke Skalmantas. Ruling from about 1316 to 1341, Gediminas made Vilnius his capital, absorbed Ruthenian principalities including Kiev and pushed the grand duchy's borders from the Baltic toward the Black Sea, dying a pagan.

His sons Algirdas and Kęstutis and their descendants divided the inheritance, and in 1386 Algirdas' son Jogaila accepted baptism and the Polish crown through the Union of Krewo, founding the Jagiellonian branch. Under Vytautas the Great the dynasty's armies shared the victory over the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald in 1410; Jagiellonian kings later wore the crowns of Poland, Hungary and Bohemia. The line ended with Sigismund II Augustus in 1572, three years after the 1569 Union of Lublin joined Lithuania and Poland in one commonwealth.

Other branches stayed Orthodox and were Ruthenized: the Galitzines and Trubetskoys served Muscovy, the Polonized Czartoryskis remaining magnates of Poland.