small note mentioning Vytenis as "the brother and predecessor" of Gediminas. After the letter came to light, textbooks almost universally represented Vytenis and Gediminas as brothers. However, historian Tomas Baranauskas believes the word "brother" has been interpreted too literally, and that the two were in fact cousins. Grand Duke Vytenis' origins are relatively well-established; he was the son of Butvydas, who was Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1291 to 1295. No consensus exists about the identity of Butvydas' father. While some genealogies give Traidenis as the ancestor, this has been described as unlikely: the later marriage of Gediminas' daughter Eufemija and Traidenis' great-grandson Boleslaw-Yuri would have violated canon law, since the two would have been related by blood, and this violation would likely have been noticed by the pope. Recent research indicates that Gediminids' ancestor may have been Skalmantas. In 1974 historian Jerzy Ochmański noted that Zadonshchina, a poem from the end of the 14th century, contains a line in which two sons of Algirdas name their ancestors: "We are two brothers – sons of Algirdas, and grandsons of Gediminas, and great-grandsons of Skalmantas." This discovery led to the belief that Skalmantas was the long-sought ancestor of the Gediminids. Ochmański posited that the poem skipped the generation represented by Butvydas, and jumped back to the unknown ancestor. Baranauskas disagrees, believing Skalmantas was Butvydas' brother rather than his father, and that Vytenis and Gediminas were therefore cousins. Siblings It is known that Gediminas, born about 1275, had one sister (or possibly two, see below for the wife of Andrei of Kozelsk) and several brothers: Vainius, Fiodor of Kiev, possibly Vytenis, and possibly Margiris. If Vytenis, who was Grand Duke of Lithuania from about 1295 to 1315, was indeed Gediminas' brother, he was probably the eldest son. Historians recognize one son of Grand Duke Vytenis, Žvelgaitis, who may have died before his father. In 1310 Žvelgaitis, already a mature man, led an army to nearby Livonia in modern-day Latvia and Estonia. After Vytenis died in about 1315, Gediminas became the Grand Duke. There are no sources indicating that Vytenis' brothers or other family members advanced competing claims. Vainius first appears in written sources in 1324. In 1326, as Duke of Polatsk, he signed a treaty with the Livonian Order and Novgorod. Scholars place his death sometime between 1338 and 1342. Vainius' only known son, Liubko, died in 1342 during a battle with