The Mongol imperial authority since the death of Ögedei Khan has been in interregnum.
The relentless scheming of Ögödei’s widow Töregene, who has ruled as regent for the five years that her son Güyük and his cousin Batu have vied for the Mongol throne, results in the election of Güyük, Ögedei's eldest son, to the throne in 1246.
Meanwhile, the Carpini party dispatched by Pope Innocent IV had traveled along the shores of the Dzungarian lakes, reaching the imperial camp called Sira Orda (i.e., Yellow Pavilion), near Karakorum and the Orkhon River, on July 22 , having ridden an estimated three thousand miles in one hundred and six days.
They had tightly bandaged their bodies so they could endure the excessive fatigue of this enormous ride, which has taken them across the Jaec or Ural River, and north of the Caspian Sea and the Aral to the Jaxartes or Syr Darya (quidam fluvius magnus cujus nomen ignoramus, "a big river whose name we do not know"), and the Muslim cities that stand on its banks.
They are so ill, wrote the legate, that they “could scarcely sit a horse; and throughout all that Lent our food had been nought but millet with salt and water, and with only snow melted in a kettle for drink.”
Güyük’s formal election in a great Kurultai, or diet of the tribes, takes place while the friars are at Sira Orda, along with three thousand to four thousand envoys and deputies from all parts of Asia and eastern Europe, bearing homage, tribute and presents.
They witness the formal enthronement on the 24th of August at another camp in the vicinity called the Golden Ordu, after which they are presented to the emperor.
The great Khan refuses the invitation to become Christian, and demands that the Pope and rulers of Europe should come to him and swear allegiance to him.
Güyük Khan does not dismiss the expedition until November.
He gives them a letter to the Pope—written in Mongol, Arabic, and Latin—that is a brief imperious assertion of the Khan's office as the scourge of God.
They begin a long winter journey home.
