The death of Wenceslas III was followed in Bohemia by seven years of struggle for the throne between Habsburgs, Wittelsbachs and the local magnates. Finally John of Luxemburg, supported by Prague and married to the last Premyslide princess, received the crown as an imperial fief from his father, Henry VII. The fourteen-year-old heir of the Duchy of Luxemburg and eldest son of the German emperor had no easy task in Bohemia. Without the support of his father, who died two years after John's coronation, he had to find a compromise with the great lords of the realm.
If King John had lived permanently in the country and balanced his all-European interests with those of Bohemia, he might have restored the authority of the Crown just as successfully as Charles of Anjou had done in Hungary. However, he preferred to participate in chivalric military pursuits, plan fanciful but unattended tournaments in Prague and used his Bohemian income to finance these extravagances. In return he was forced to confirm the rights of the magnates who had come to rule the country in the preceding turbulent years. The great lords of Bohemia had not received such privileges in the thirteenth century as their Hungarian fellows, but now the king accepted their demands to limit the magnates' military obligations, grant them the right to approve the oft-needed extraordinary subsidies and guarantee the heritability of their possessions, including some lands that used to belong to the Crown. The charters of 1310 became the foundation of noble rule in Bohemaia. The extensive absences of the king meant that the magnates and prelates had to take over the government of the realm. Until the early fourteenth century, it appeared as if Bohemia, the most advanced and most urbanized region in the area, was developing on a more western pattern and would follow England and France in evolving a stong, centralized monarchy which could defeat the tendency towards feudal oligarchy by relying on the support of the townsmen and gentry. However, from 1310 the decline of royal power indicated a different path, which finally led the country into the direction of an easten European political structure.
After having abandoned the Premyslide tradition of a strong monarchy -- together with his Premyslide wife who had tried to play her own politics with some magnates -- John obtained a free hand to embark on international diplomatic and military manoeuvres of his dynasty. Up until 1320, when Wladyslaw of Poland's coronation sealed the restoration of the monarchy, plans to pursue traditional Bohemian claims to Poland seemed promising. In the years during which John secured his position in the German Empire by changing sides several times, he profited from the growing power of the Polish king. Numerous Piast dukes and princes of Silesia chose to accept sovereignty of the more distant Prague instead of submitting to the rule of Cracow. Between 1320 and 1346 John secured overlordship in most of the Slavic-speaking provinces of Upper and Lower Lusatia. By also allying with the Teutonic Knights, whom he supported in several 'crusades' against Lithuania, he marked out a northern expansion for Bohemia along the borders of Poland.