Love or a Kingdom(1936)

Love or a Kingdom is a historical drama about King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland, who falls in love with Barbara Radziwiłłówna, a Lithuanian noblewoman, despite his mother Queen Bona's insistence that he marry a French princess instead. Caught between duty and desire, Sigismund must navigate court politics and family pressure as he pursues a forbidden romance that threatens to reshape the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The film explores the personal cost of power and the struggle between love and political obligation in 16th-century Europe, where royal marriages were weapons of statecraft and defiance carried dangerous consequences.