The favoritism of Hungarian king Ladislaus IV towards the Cumans had made him so unpopular that many of his subjects have accused him of inciting the Mongols to invade Hungary.

Ladislaus had in fact employed Mongol prisoners of war, known as nyögérs, when subjugating a rebellion in the Szepesség in September 1285.

The King prefers the Cumans' way of life, including their costumes and hairstyle, and takes Cuman girls as his mistresses.

According to Lodomer, Archbishop of Esztergom, he copulated with his favorite concubine, Aydua—whom the Archbishop described as a "poisonous viper"—in public.

Ladislaus had imprisoned his wife in 1286 and granted all her revenues to his mistress.

Archbishop Lodomer liberated Queen Isabella the following September, then summoned the prelates, the barons and the noblemen to an assembly in Buda and excommunicated Ladislaus.

The barons capture Ladislaus in the Szepesség in January 1288.

Although his partisans soon liberate him, he acquiesces in concluding an agreement with Archbishop Lodomer.

The Archbishop absolves Ladislaus on condition that the King will live in accordance with Christian morals.

However, Ladislaus breaks his promise.

He abducts his sister, Elizabeth, Prioress of the Dominican Monastery of the Blessed Virgin on Rabbits' Island and gives her in marriage to a Czech aristocrat, Zavis of Falkenstein.

King Andrew II of Hungary had granted the Burzenland region to the Teutonic Knights in 1211, with the purpose of ensuring security of the southeastern borders of his kingdom against the Cumans, whose ethnic origins are uncertain.

A nomadic tribe of tengrist Kipchaks, the Cumans are reported to have blond hair, fair skin and blue eyes (which sets them apart from other groups and will later puzzle historians), although their anthropological characteristics suggests that their geographical origin might be in Inner-Asia, South-Siberia, or as Istvan Vassary states, east of the large bend of the Yellow River in China.

The Teutonic Knights had campaigned against the Cumans, on behalf of King Andrew, during the years of 1221-1225.

However, the Teutonic Knights failed to defeat the Cumans and began to establish a country independent of the King of Hungary.

In 1238, after Mongol attacks on Cumania, King Béla IV of Hungary offered refuge to the remainder of the Cuman people under their leader Khan Kuthen (Hungarians spelled his name Kötöny/Köten).

Kuthen in turn vowed to convert his forty thousand families to Christianity.

King Béla had hoped to use the new subjects as auxiliary troops against the Mongols, who were already threatening Hungary.

A tense situation erupted when Mongol troops invaded Hungary.

The Hungarians, frustrated by their own helplessness, took revenge on the Cumans, whom they accused of being Mongol spies.

After a bloody fight, the Hungarians killed Kuthen and his bodyguards.

Another source states that during the Mongol invasion of Hungary, after Koten, his family and other Cuman nobles were arrested, Koten realized that he would be handed over to the Mongols so he killed himself and his wives.

This enraged the proud Cumans, who left for the Balkans, going on a rampage of destruction "equal to that which Europe had not experienced since the incursions of the Mongols."

With the departure of its only ally and most efficient military force, Hungary was now further weakened to attack.

After the invasion, King Béla IV, now penniless and humiliated after the confiscation of his treasury and loss of three of his border areas, had begged the powerful Cumans to return to Hungary and help rebuild the country.

In return for their military service, the Hungarian king invited the Cumans to settle in areas of the Great Plain between the Danube and the Theiss Rivers; this region had become almost uninhabited after the Mongol raids of 1241-1242.

The nomads have subsequently settled throughout the Great Hungarian Plain, creating two regions incorporating the name Cumania (Kunság in Hungarian), Greater Cumania (Nagykunság) and …

…Little Cumania (Kiskunság).

As the Cumans came into the kingdom the Hungarian nobility suspected that the king intended to use the Cumans to strengthen his royal power at their expense.

During the following centuries the Cumans in Hungary will be granted rights and privileges, the extent of which depends on the prevailing political situation.

Some of these rights will survive until the end of the nineteenth century, although be then the Cumans had long since assimilated with Hungarians.

The Cumans are different in every way to the local population of Hungary—their appearance, attire, and hairstyle set them apart.

Elizabeth the Cuman, the daughter of a Cuman chieftain Seyhan, had in 1270 become queen of Hungary, ruling during the minority of her son (future king Ladislaus IV of Hungary) in the years of 1272-1277.

A struggle took place between her and the noble opposition, which led to her imprisonment by the rebels; but supporters freed her in 1274.

During her reign, gifts of precious clothes, land, and other objects were given to the Cumans with the intent to ensure their continued support, and in particular during the civil war between King Béla IV of Hungary and Stephen V of Hungary, when both sides tried to gain Cuman support.

Bela during this conflict in 1264 sent Cuman troops commanded by the chieftain Menk to fight his son Stephen.

Elizabeth married King Stephen V of Hungary; they were parents of six children.

Their son, Ladislaus IV of Hungary, became the king of Hungary while her other son, Andrew of Hungary, became Duke of Slavonia.

Stephen V of Hungary had by 1262 taken the title of 'Dominus Cumanorum' and become the Cumans' highest judge.

After Stephen's enthronement, the Cumans came directly under the power of the king of Hungary and the title of 'Dominus Cumanorum' (judge of the Cumans) had passed to the count palatine, who was the highest official after the king.

The Cumans have their own representatives and are exempt from the jurisdiction of county officials.

Bohemia’s nineteen-year-old King Wenceslas II Premyslid, having overcome the dissident faction headed by Zavis, his mother’s lover and now husband, executes him in 1290 and begins ruling independently.

Ladislaus spends the last years of his life wandering from place to place.

Central government actually disappears, because the prelates and the barons rule the kingdom independently of the monarch.

For instance, Ivan Kőszegi and his brothers wage wars against Albert I, Duke of Austria, but Ladislaus does not intervene, although the Austrians capture at least thirty fortresses along the western borders.

The Kőszegis have offered the crown to Andrew the Venetian, who arrives in Hungary in early 1290.

However, one of their opponents captures the pretender and surrenders him to Duke Albert.

Ladislaus appoints as palatine one Mizse, who had recently converted from Islam to Christianity.

Pope Nicholas IV is even planning to proclaim a crusade against Ladislaus.

However, Ladislaus, who has always been partial towards his Cuman subjects, is assassinated by three Cumans—Árbóc, Törtel and Kemence—at the castle of Körösszeg (Cheresig, Romania) on July 10, 1290 Mizse and the brother of Aydua, Nicholas take vengeance for his death, slaughtering the murderers.

The Cuman people are believed to have played a significant role in the Vlach-Bulgar Rebellion led by brothers Asen and Peter of Tarnovo, resulting in victory over Constantinople and the restoration of Bulgaria's independence in 1185.

The Cuman participation in the creation of the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1185 and thereafter brought about basic changes in the political and ethnic sphere of Bulgaria and the Balkans.

The Cumans were allies in the Bulgarian-Latin Wars with emperor Kaloyan of Bulgaria, who was descended from the Cumans.

In 1205, at the Battle of Adrianople (1205), fourteen thousand Cuman light cavalry had contributed to Kaloyan's crushing victory over the Latin Crusaders.

Cuman troops will continue to be hired throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by both the Bulgarians and Imperial Greeks.

The Cumans who remain east and south of the Carpathian Mountains establish a county named Cumania, which is a strong military base in an area consisting parts of Moldavia and Wallachia.

The Hungarian kings claim supremacy over Cumania—among the nine titles of the Hungarian kings of the Árpád and Anjou dynasties are rex Cumaniae—but few, if any, Cuman leaders recognize their overlordship, pointing to the fact that rex Cumaniae is an allegory title since the kings never fulfill this role.

The Cuman influence in Wallachia and Moldavia is very strong, according to some historians who claim that the earliest Wallachian rulers bore Cuman names (e.g., Tihomir and Bassarab).

The Cumans will play a crucial role in the formation of Wallachia at the end of the fourteenth century; many of the first Romanian nobleman are of Cuman descent.

The toponymy of the most densely populated regions of Romanian settlement shows strong evidence of Cuman place-names.

With a lack of convincing archaeological evidence of a Cuman civilization, it appears the Cumans may have been a minority in the local population, but they make up part of the ruling élite in Wallachia.