Gabriel Bethlen

Gabriel Bethlen (; 15 November 1580 – 15 November 1629) was Prince of Transylvania from 1613 to 1629 and Duke of Opole from 1622 to 1625. He was also King-elect of Hungary from 1620 to 1621, but he never took control of the whole kingdom. Bethlen, supported by the Ottomans, led his Calvinist principality against the Habsburgs and their Catholic allies. Early life Gabriel was the elder of the two sons of Farkas Bethlen de Iktár and Druzsiána Lázár de Szárhegy. Gabriel was born in his father's estate, Marosillye (now Ilia in Romania), on 15 November 1580. Farkas Bethlen was a Hungarian nobleman who lost his ancestral estate, Iktár (now Ictar-Budinț in Romania), due to the Ottoman occupation of the central territories of the Kingdom of Hungary. Stephen Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, granted Marosillye to him and made him captain-general of the principality. Druzsiána Lázár was descended from a Székely noble family. Both Farkas Bethlen and his wife died in 1591, leaving their two sons, Gabriel and Stephen, orphaned. The brothers were put under the guardianship of their maternal uncle, András Lázár de Szárhegy. They lived in the Lázár Castle in Szárhegy in Székely Land (now Lăzarea in Romania) for years. Gabriel's court historian, Gáspár Bojti Veres, described Lázár as a "grumpy and fierce" soldier who did not care much about their formal education.