Kingdom of Lithuania (1918)
The Kingdom of Lithuania was a short-lived constitutional monarchy created towards the end of World War I when Lithuania was under occupation by the German Empire. The Council of Lithuania declared Lithuania's independence on February 16, 1918, but the Council was unable to form a government, police, or other state institutions due to the continued presence of German troops. The Germans presented various proposals to incorporate Lithuania into the German Empire, particularly Prussia. The Lithuanians resisted this idea and hoped to preserve their independence by creating a separate constitutional monarchy. On June 4, 1918, they voted to offer the Lithuanian throne to the German noble Wilhelm, 2nd Duke of Urach. Duke Wilhelm accepted the offer in July 1918 and took the name Mindaugas II. However, he never visited Lithuania. His election stirred up controversy, divided the Council, and did not achieve the desired results. As Germany was losing the war and was engulfed in the German Revolution, Lithuania suspended its decision to invite Duke William on November 2, 1918, thereby ending his short reign.
Metropolitanate of Lithuania
The Metropolitanate of Lithuania was a short-lived metropolitanate of the Orthodox Church in the 14th century. Created between 1315 and 1317, it had only two metropolitans and was discontinued in 1371. Its establishment was part of the entry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into the rivalry for the religious control of the Rus' principalities between Galicia–Volhynia, the Principality of Tver, and the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The Byzantine Empire, seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople, generally preferred a united Metropolitanate of Kiev and all Rus' and was reluctant to divide its authority. Therefore, whenever possible, the Byzantium would unite the metropolitanates. Facing opposition to actual physical division of the metropolitanates, the Lithuanians employed additional tactics: promotion of their own candidates to the seat of the Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus'. By the 1440s however, the final years of the Byzantine Empire, the Grand Duchy of Moscow had effectively won the dispute and became the new spiritual center of the Orthodox tradition in Eastern Europe.