A claim to a nearly vanished familySourced
Born to a peasant family,
she passed herself off as a nobleman's daughter.
In 17th-century Poland, Agnieszka Machówna used her literacy and knowledge of court manners to claim she was Aleksandra Zborowska. With that branch of the family nearly extinct, her story went unquestioned at first. An inheritance dispute exposed the claim; she was executed in 1681.
A gap in a family tree
made the false identity possible.
Summary / translation: Unbubly · CC BY-SA 4.0
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Agnieszka Machówna · Wikimedia contributors
Adapted, summarized and translated from the source. Adapted text is also available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Reviewed: 2026-10-01