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[[File:Etykieta Leszek.jpg|200px|thumb|A 2002 label of Leszek Premium beer brand]]

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,<ref>I've adjusted the spelling of all medieval Polish names in this post to make them more pronounceable to English speakers. Back then, people didn't even know how spell their own names, so I believe that's OK.</ref> 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. Starting from the year 1205, this would have been our Lestek.

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 strengthen 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 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 was just as bad an idea as it sounds. But when Pope Innocent III announced a new crusade in 1215, Lestek resolved to 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.

But when the crusade eventually started two years later, only Casimir did actually join. For other dukes, the crusade had lost its appeal. Innocent III had died in 1216, leaving Ketlich without either influence in Rome or further interest in the crusade. Meanwhile, Lestek and Conrad had made peace with the elder dukes, Henry the Bearded and Vladislav Spindleshanks, so they no longer needed their crusader's immunity so much. And what about Spitter? Betrayed by Lestek, he had to run into exile from his spindle-shanked uncle, so crusades were definitely the last thing on his mind.