László, Croatian and Slovak: Ladislav II; 1131 – 14 January 1163) was King of Hungary and Croatia between 1162 and 1163, having usurped the crown from his nephew, Stephen III.

[2] A few months after his birth, his mother took him and his elder brother, Géza, to an assembly held at Arad where the barons who were considered responsible for the blinding of the King were massacred upon the Queen's order.

Scholars Ferenc Makk and Gyula Kristó argue that the two dukes only received this grant around 1152, when the King appointed his son, Stephen, his successor.

[13] On the other hand, Niketas Choniates wrote that Ladislaus "defected to Manuel, not so much because Géza loved him less than he should or that he feared a plot on his brother's part, but more because he was fascinated"[15] by Stephen's favorable reception by the Emperor.

[19][20] Six weeks after the young Stephen III's coronation, his partisans were routed at Kapuvár forcing him to leave Hungary and seek refuge in Austria.

He marched out of Sardica and when arrived in the region of the Danube adjacent to Braničevo and Belgrade dispatched his nephew Alexios Kontostephanos with an armed force to [Stephen].

[27][28] However, the Archbishop did not yield to him and continued to support Stephen III, who had returned to Hungary and captured Pressburg (present-day Bratislava in Slovakia).

[13] However, continues Choniates, Ladislaus "refrained from marriage so that he should not forget to return to his country and thus bring ruin to his domestic affairs, enchanted by the spell of a wife".