It was located between rivers Danube to its east and north, Drava and Mura[?] to the south and Rab[?] to the west. Its history is connected with the mission of St Cyril[?] and St. Methodius[?] to the Greater Moravia[?].
It was one of the several slavic states and groups connecting the areas inhabited by the north and the south slavs before these two groups were separated by the conquests by Franks (today Austria), Hungarians, and later expansion of the romanic-speaking area of Romanians[?].
The slavic people of that time were weakly differentiated, speaking closely related dialects of the same common language. The inhabitants of Blatensko Knezevstvo were most probably closely related to each of neighboring slavic people: Moravians (Czech) to the north-west, Karantanians (Slovenians) to the west, Slovakians to the north, Panonian Croats[?] to the south, Serbs to the south-east and Severans to the east, providing the bridge between those slavic states and tribal unions.
They slavic inhabitation of the Panonia started in the 5th century after fall of the Hunic[?] tribal union, but the most intense immigration was happening during the second half of 6th century, as a part of the Avar tribal union (Avar Khaganate[?]). After defeat of Avars by the coordinated attack by Franks (led by Charles the Great) and Bulgars (led by khan Krum), the liberated slavs of panonia started organizing semi-independent political units. By 833 they formed the Greater Moravia[?] it the regions to the west of panonia, and sometimes later (843), Pribin, one of the contending Moravian princes expelled from the Moravia founded the Blatensko Knjazevstvo (i.e. "Duchy at the muddy lake"). Its capitol was the Blatnograd, a fortified city built on Blatna (i.e. Muddy) river (hungarian name Zala) between the small and large Blatno (hungarian name Balaton) lakes. The duchy was founded as the vassal of the east-frankian (i.e. german) kings, but when it started resisting influence of german feudals and clergy, trying to organize the independent slavic archdiocesis, it was first reconquered by germans, and soon afterwards the remaining elements of slavic self-organization were terminated with the Magyar conquest of panonia.
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