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Interesting. As far as I can tell, both nations see the union as "their" one. Poland, as you say, grew to be more dominant culturally and politically, Lithuania brought in more territory. The Commonwealth eventually collapsed, which certainly in Poland is seen as the greatest disaster of the country's history. I'd imagine similarly in Lithuania; it brought cruel foreign rule to all of its former territories. The state collapsed because it was more and more dysfunctional, perhaps due to its inhomogeneity, so eg in Poland the union is sometimes seen as short term good but long term bad. But the mainstream view remains "look how big Poland was. Yes and that other bit too". It probably doesn't help that after the post-war border rejig, Lithuania is left as a territorially small country, with much of its heartland chopped off, and initially at least with a huge Polish minority wishing that the territory they live in was in fact awarded to Poland. Vilnius to this day is, i believe, something like 10% Polish population. There's countless trips from Poland admiring "our" city full of "Polish history". So basically Poland and Lithuania built together an empire that collapsed badly, leaving considerable animosity between the nations, which i guess sours the memory of the empire, and leaves people wondering what the past would have looked like if not for the joint venture. The reality is that, together or apart, it still lie between Russia and Germany, so a hard place to be, but it's always nice to have a bogeyman to blame |
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Władysław_IV_Vasa
Unfortunately, this was completely mismanaged by prince's father and, transitively, the Pope, who saw this as a great possibility to expand Rome's rule in the region.