Ladislaus the Posthumous
Ladislaus the Posthumous was born four months after his father died, crowned king of Hungary at twelve weeks with a crown his mother's lady-in-waiting had stolen from a vault the night before, spent his childhood as the ward of a cousin who would not give him up, reigned for five years, had a hero's son beheaded, and died at seventeen of what an exhumation in 1985 found to have been leukaemia. His father was Albert II of Habsburg, king of Hungary and Bohemia and German king, who died of dysentery on campaign against the Turks in October 1439; his mother Elizabeth of Luxembourg, Sigismund's daughter, was determined that the crown should not go to the Polish king the Hungarian nobles were choosing. She had the Holy Crown taken from Visegrád and the baby crowned at Székesfehérvár in May 1440. The nobles crowned Wladyslaw of Poland anyway, and only his death at Varna in 1444 made Ladislaus king in fact, with János Hunyadi as regent from 1446. The child himself was in the keeping of the Emperor Frederick III at Wiener Neustadt and stayed there until the Austrian estates besieged the emperor in 1452 and got him out. He was crowned in Bohemia in 1453, where George of Poděbrady governed for him, and was governed himself by his uncle Ulrich of Cilli, who hated the Hunyadis. After Hunyadi's death in the summer of 1456, weeks after his victory at Belgrade, Ulrich went to the fortress with the king and was cut down there by Hunyadi's elder son László. The king swore no revenge, went to Buda, and in March 1457 had László Hunyadi arrested and beheaded and the younger son Matthias imprisoned; Hungary rose against him and he took Matthias with him to Vienna and Prague. He was in Prague preparing to marry a French princess when he fell ill and died in November 1457, within a few days, and Poděbrady was accused of poisoning him until the bones were read. Hungary elected the boy in his prison, Matthias Corvinus, and Bohemia elected Poděbrady.
- Lived: 1440 CE – 1457 CE
- Nationality: Austrian
- Roles: king, monarch
