Kingdom of Lithuania

The Kingdom of Lithuania was a constitutional monarchy created as a result of the 1926 Lithuanian coup d'etat which was led by the first president of Interwar Lithuania Antanas Smetona and military officer Povilas Plechavičius. After the coup, Antanas Smetona set an undemocratic authoritarian government with him being the president and de facto leader of the country. In early 1927 he offered Romanas Vladislovas Sanguška (Roman Władysław Sanguszko 1901-1984), a Lithuanian noble of the Sanguszko family, to form a constitutional parliamentary monarchy in which Romanas Vladislovas Sanguška would gain the status of a king (Lithuanian: kunigaikštis), meanwhile Antanas Smetona would become the one and only prime minister to rule the country. Romanas Vladislovas Sanguška agreed to this proposal and was officially crowned in the capital city of Vilnius on July 6th 1927, becoming one of the few Lithuanian monarchs which nominated themselves as kings. Previous Lithuanian monarchs to do so were Mindaugas and Vytautas the Great. As Sanguszko noble family had greater ties to the Gediminid dynasty of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, king Romanas Vladislovas Sanguška gained the title of Gediminas II or Gediminas the Second. The kingdom ceased to exist after the Soviet occupation of 1940 and lasted roughly for thirteen years.