Voivodes of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth were one of the highest ranking officials who could sit in the Senate of Poland. They were the officials in charge of the voivodeships (provinces/palatinates) of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The office first appears as Palatine (Palatinus) who held the foremost position after the King. As Poland broke up into separate principalities, each Prince had his court and his own Palatine. When the Kingdom was (in part) consolidated, the Palatines became heads of those former Principalities, which then became Palatinates. As such, the Palatines were members of the King's Council (comites palatini). The title merged with the Polish Voivode or Wojewoda (Slavic Woi-woda/вои-вода (Cyrillic), with two functions, in army or war, and as a “guide” or director, a lexical and institutional equivalent of the Latin Dux Exercituum and Duke, known by the German Herzog, each meaning "leader of the army"). The difference between Voivode and Duke is that whereas the Duke began as a rank by appointment of the Monarch and later became a hereditary title of honour, the Voivode was appointed for life and maintained real authority as an official—before the Voivodes, too, lost significance to the Starostas. Polish historians, however, use Palatine (Palatyn) and Voivode (Wojewoda) synonymously. Powers The powers of voivodes varied, as determined by historical precedent specific to each voivodeship. The least powerful of whom were in Halych Ruthenia (Ruś Halicka), and the most powerful of whom were vassals answerable to the king alone, in Royal Prussia (Prusy Królewskie). Those powers changed over time as well. The office of the voivode was created in the Kingdom of Poland under Piasts, and spread from the Crown of the Polish Kingdom to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after 1569 where the officeholder became an overseer of his voivodeship, over its administration; however, the effectiveness and real authority of this office declined, so that in the Kingdom of Poland under Jagiellons it was much reduced in significance. In the field of the military, the voivodeship retained only the role of the leader of a pospolite ruszenie. Administrative powers were limited to the role of Marshal of the Sejmik, but even that had disappeared by the time of the Commonwealth. The voivode's control over the cities was mostly honorific, as formally that function was the power of the starost. One of the few powers that voivodes retained throughout history was the power to set and enforce