New monument of our history in Latvia. Latvian history too :)

[vyrud]

Few weeks ago in Latvia, township of Aglona, has been officially opened monument of the first and the single king of Lithuania Mindaugas and his wife queen Morta. It is widely assumed that Mindaugas is important figure and "own man" only in history of Lithuania and Belarus. But Latvians also treat him as an "own man". And this belief isn't ungrounded. E.g. there are documentally known only five places where Mindaugas was present: two of these places are in Latvia while the exact location of three others aren't known and disputed. From the other side Mindaugas wife Morta (in Latvian Marta) was the daughter of Latvian (in modern meaning of this word) nobleman (ruler of Medelona castle). By the legend Mindaugas was killed also in Latvia: in the township of Aglona. This is also not ungrounded belief since it is well known and historically grounded fact that his assasin Daumantas then fled to Pskov: Aglona isn't far away from Pskov while it would be much more difficult to flee to Pskov from deep inside Lithuania (especially Samogitia). Summarizing in Lithuania still exists the single monument to Mindaugas (in Vilnius) while Marta don't have own monument at all. So Latvia took the lead :)

So this is new monument of the king in Aglona (photo from lrytas.lt):