Having regained Trakai as his patrimony and becoming the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Vytautas built a castle on the island of Galvė Lake. On October 27th, 1430, Vytautas died in the castle.
Vytautas' journey to his homeland was very difficult. In 1392, he lost both his parents and brothers, changed his faith three times, his name twice, and at the age of 40, a respectable age for that time, he became the Grand Duke and began to rule. To demonstrate his power, he built Trakai Castle around 1408. Vytautas had made many international contacts, nurtured knightly culture, and was changing the world of nobility. His way of ruling an empire was to smite his own so that strangers would be afraid. He bequeathed to Lithuania a symbolic seal with a knight, which becomes Vytis, the symbol of the state. Vytautas was a travelling and fighting monarch, so he did not live regularly in Trakai, but he always rushed to his beloved wife Ona.
He is said to have been a cruel ruler: if he was given a bad advice, he liked shooting at his subjects, putting them on the stake, and if they failed to do something, he ordered them to be hanged. According to one written account, "Once two soldiers, who had just robbed a church, said to each other: 'Let's hang ourselves quickly, Vytautas is coming, it will be much worse when he appears."
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