Politically, Hungary is one of the oldest countries in Europe, established in 896, prior to the division of France and Germany or unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Árpád was the Magyar leader whom sources name as the single leader who unified the Magyar tribes into a political entity via the "Covenant of Blood" (Hungarian: vérszerződés), thereafter known as Hungary[25] and led the new nation to the Carpathian Basin in the 9th century.[25]

After an early seminomad Hungarian state, the Principality of Hungary was formed in this territory, the nation's military power allowed the Hungarians to conduct successful fierce campaigns and raids from Constantinople as far as today's Spain.[26] A later defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 signaled an end to most campaigns on foreign territories. The ruling prince (Hungarian: fejedelem) Géza of the Árpád dynasty, who was the ruler of only some of the united territory, but the nominal overlord of all seven Magyar tribes, intended to integrate Hungary into Christian Western Europe.[27] and the first Roman Catholic bishopric was established under his reign.

Géza chose his first-born son (Vajk the later King Stephen I of Hungary) to be his successor. This was contrary to the then-dominant tradition of the succession of the eldest surviving member of the ruling family. (See: agnatic seniority) By ancestral right prince Koppány, - as the oldest member of the dynasty - should have claimed the throne, but the fight in the chief prince's family started after Géza's death, in 997.

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