Prince Vladimir II Yaroslavich of Halych, who had been dethroned by his boyars, seeks refuge in the court of Béla III in 1188.

Béla leads his armies against Halych and occupies it, but afterwards he grants the principality to his second son, Andrew and has prince Vladimir arrested.

Béla had on May 31, 1189, welcomed Frederick I, who is making his Crusade to the Holy Land, and on the emperor's request he had set free his brother, Géza, who then departed for Constantinople.

Afterwards, when Emperor Frederick I enters into a controversy with Emperor Isaac II, Béla mediates between them.

However, in the meantime, Prince Vladimir II escapes from Hungary and reoccupies his principality.

The principality of Galich (Polish, Halicz), located north of the Carpathian Mountains and extending from the area around Kraków in Poland as far east as Ternopol in Ukraine, is united with …

The principality of Galicia-Volhynia to the southwest has highly developed trade relations with its Polish, Hungarian, and Lithuanian neighbors and emerges as another successor to Kievan Rus'.

In the early thirteenth century, Prince Roman Mstislavich had united the two previously separate principalities, conquered Kiev, and assumed the title of grand duke of Kievan Rus'.

His son, Prince Daniil (Danylo; r. 1238-64), is the first ruler of Kievan Rus' to accept a crown from the Roman papacy, apparently doing so without breaking with Orthodoxy.

Early in the fourteenth century, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Constantinople grants the rulers of Galicia-Volhynia a metropolitan to compensate for the move of the Kievan metropolitan to Vladimir.

However, a long and unsuccessful struggle against the Mongols combine with internal opposition to the prince and foreign intervention to weaken Galicia-Volhynia.

With the end of the Mstislavich Dynasty in the mid-fourteenth century, Galicia-Volhynia cease to exist; Lithuania takes Volhynia, and Poland annexes Galicia.

King Casimir III initiates Poland’s eastward expansion beyond ethnically Polish lands by the 1349 acquisition of the duchy of Galich-Vladimir (later to be known as Galicia), originally to secure a barrier against Tatar invasion.