Julijona Alšėniškė¶

Summary¶

Julijona Alšėniškė (Uliana Olshanska; died 1448) is Vytautas’s second wife, married at Grodno in 1418 (13 November per en.wikipedia; „before Christmas“ per VLE), with the Bishop of Włocławek officiating. The widow of the murdered Prince Ivan of Karachev, a clever woman who asks of every suitor whether he knows how to listen, she marries a man who does not hear what she says, and finds it good irony. Book IV makes her the old Grand Duke’s companion and the point-of-view of ch. 10 and 18: the person who sits beside him in the last twelve years and works out that he is listening to something under the floor. Ona was her aunt, and she is the aunt of Jogaila’s later queen, Sophia of Halshany. Not to be confused with Uliana of Tver (Julijona Tverietė), Algirdas’s widow and Jogaila’s mother.

Julijona Alšėniškė


Tipas	veikėjas
Metai	c. ?–1448
Status	Istoriniai duomenys
Pastaba	Grand Duchess of Lithuania; Vytautas’s second wife (from 1418), daughter of Ivan Olshanski.

Appearance & tells¶

Thirty in 1418, with a silver band on her hair, a red cloak and a belt of clinking brass buckles. She crosses herself with the right hand out of habit and then, seeing the priest, with the left: the way women learn in two-faith families. At forty-one at Lutsk (1429) she wears a plain dark-blue gown without pearls, „because pearls get in the way when a hand must reach the pot“. Tells: she counts and cannot stop, she reads her husband’s face „like a map“, and she keeps vigil beside the bed.

Want · Need · Lie · Truth¶


Want (external)	To be heard: to marry a man who listens.
Need (internal)	To be loved by a man who is half in another world.
Lie they believe	That marriage to an old man who hears only through water will be a quiet ironic one.
Truth they learn (or refuse)	That a husband who listens to the floor lives with someone who speaks, and that his last letter is “Come back if you can; if you cannot, know that I know” (Book IV ch. 29).

Arc by book¶

Book IV (1418-1430): POV of ch. 10 (Julijona): married in Vilnius, dines with the Karaim captain Elijas, finds Vytautas awake at night counting; Form 7 begins; stages the Lutsk feast and finds she can no longer count (ch. 18); helps him turn the bed against Giltinė (ch. 28); sits at his bedside through the fever and reads him letters (ch. 29, 30).
Book V (1430): asks that no one go down to the vault for three days after his death (ch. 1); chooses the burial place in the Vilnius cathedral beside Ona (ch. 2); mentioned in ch. 4, 7.

Power & magic¶

Tier 0: Orthodox, with no gift and no bargain. Her power is attention. She is one of the few mortals who realises that Vytautas is listening to something other than people, and that the voice she begins to hear at the Lutsk feast counting with her (the Counter) belongs to the same world.

Record vs saga¶

[Historical record]: Uliana (Julijona) Olshanska, daughter of Ivan Olshansky, a leading ally of Vytautas; her first husband was Ivan of Karachev, who according to Posilge and Długosz was murdered so that she could marry Vytautas. After Ona (Anna) died on 31 July 1418, Vytautas married Julijona; because Ona was her aunt the Bishop of Vilnius Piotr Krakowczyk refused to officiate without papal leave, and Jan Kropidło, Bishop of Włocławek, performed the ceremony (at Grodno per VLE; 13 Nov 1418 per en.wikipedia’s Vytautas article, „before Christmas 1418“ per VLE and the Uliana article); Pope Martin V granted a dispensation later. The marriage was childless. She died in 1448 (some sources 1449) and was buried at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. Her niece Sophia of Halshany became Jogaila’s fourth queen (1422). See Wikipedia.
[The saga’s invention]: Her age, her interior life, the voice she hears at Lutsk, and the scenes of the last winter.

Tarimas¶

ju-li-JO-na by the standard rule; another reading puts the stress on the last syllable, ju-li-jo-NA (/jʊlʲɪjoˈnɐ/), English respelling yoo-lih-yoh-NAH. Russian Uliana (oo-LYAH-nuh).

Russian Uliana (oo-LYAH-nuh).

Appearances¶

Book IV: ch. 9, 10 (POV), 12, 13, 18 (POV), 19, 22, 25, 28, 29, 30 and the afterword. Book V: ch. 1, 2, 4, 7.

Ryšiai

Member of: Alšėniškiai (Holszański, princes of Halshany)

Spouse: Vytautas (1418–…) — Married 1418 at Grodno; 13 Nov per en.wikipedia (Vytautas), ‚before Christmas‘ per VLE and en.wikipedia (Uliana Olshanska); Jan Kropidło, bishop of Włocławek, officiated after the Vilnius bishop refused; Julijona a widow, Ona’s niece.

Sąsajos¶

graph LR
  alseniskiai["Alšėniškiai (Holszański, princes of Halshany)"]
  julijona["Julijona Alšėniškė"]
  vytautas["Vytautas"]
  julijona -->|Member of| alseniskiai
  vytautas -->|Spouse| julijona
  style julijona stroke-width:3px