[2] Other monarchs of Lithuania were referred to as grand dukes, kings or emperors in extant foreign written sources as the size of the realm and their power expanded or contracted.

In Western Europe, the title of grand duke is reserved to monarchs of small polities and ranks junior to king and emperor.

The Catholic crown was to be received from the Pope or Holy Roman Emperor, powerful, Lithuania was subservient to both and with rare exceptions did not pursue the title.

The status of a kingdom was granted on 17 July 1251, when the Bishop of Chełmno was ordered to crown Mindaugas by Pope Innocent IV.

At the Congress of Lutsk in 1430, Sigismund, King of Hungary who was yet to be elected Holy Roman Emperor, offered Vytautas the crown and proclaimed Lithuania a (presumably subservient) kingdom.

After Lithuania declared independence in February 1918, the monarchy was re-established and the 2nd Duke of Urach was invited to become King Mindaugas II.

[10] The Kingdom of Lithuania was a client-state of the German Empire, and following Germany's defeat in World War I in the fall of 1918, the idea of a monarchy was abandoned in favor of a democratic republic.