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Let's start with simpler questions: who was this Lestek the White? And did he really intend to take the cross and travel to the Holy Land?
Lestek, known as "the White" due to his blond hair, was one of the youngest grandsons of Boleslav Wrymouth, the duke who divided Poland amongst his sons. Boleslav's sons divided their parts among their sons and so forth, with Poland growing into a loose collection of ever smaller duchies. In Lestek's times, the political situation in Poland resembled that in the novels of the ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' series by George R.R. Martin. In Westeros there is supposedly one realm with one king, but in fact each of the eight regions (the old seven kingdoms plus the Riverlands) is ruled by a local great lord. All these lords are constantly fighting each other by all means possible – from diplomatic marriages to kidnappings, poisonings, assassinations, to all-out wars. The nominal king is whoever, at the given moment, controls the capital city and is able to physically sit on the Iron Throne. In 13th-century Poland there was also supposedly a single kingdom (but no king) divided into several regions, each ruled by a local duke – a grandson or great-grandson of Boleslav Wrymouth – aided by local lords. All (or almost all) of these dukes were constantly fighting each other by all means possible – from diplomatic marriages to kidnappings, poisonings, assassinations, to all-out wars. The nominal high duke of all Poland was whoever, at the given moment, controlled the capital city and was able to physically sit on the throne in Cracow throne. Starting from the year 1205, this would have been our Lestek.
[[File:Pieczęć Leszka I Białego.jpg|thumb|200px|A seal of Lestek the White]]
Just like the king of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men has his power supported by the faith of the Seven, so did Polish dukes coöperate with the Catholic Church to strenghten their power. And as the popes at the time were really looking forward to freeing the Holy Land from the Saracens, the dukes could help their chances to win the Cracow Cracovian throne by participating (or at least by promising to participate) in a crusade. The crusade movement had been only moderately popular in Poland until then, but we know for instance that Henry, one of Lestek's uncles, did go on one, if not two crusades. Did Henry encourage his nephew to take the cross with tales of his overseas exploits? Unlikely, as he had died 20 years before Lestek was born.
What's more, the image of the crusade movement suffered in Lestek's lifetime after the Fourth Crusade had failed to even reach Palestine and settled on plundering the perfectly Christian Constantinople instead. This was followed by a Children's Crusade, which just as bad an idea as it sounds. But when Pope Innocent III announced a new crusade in 1215, Lestek resolved enroll anyway. Innocent promised a plenary (full) indulgence to anyone who would join the crusade himself or send an armed delegate and a partial indulgence for financial support. Taking the cross also gave you a kind of immunity, as any attack on a crusader was punishable by excommunication. The pope's protégé in Poland, Archbishop Henry Ketlich of Gnezno, had little trouble inducing a team of young Polish dukes to make a crusader's vow. The team consisted of Lestek and his brother Conrad, as well as their cousins, Casimir of Opole and Vladislav Spitter. Together they formed a coalition of junior dukes put together by Ketlich to wrest control of all Poland from the elder generation of Wrymouth's descendants.
