50 Bani Mircea the Elder

Mircea cel Bătrân ruled Wallachia from 1386 until his death in 1418, navigating the competing pressures of Ottoman expansion and Hungarian suzerainty with enough political dexterity to die in his own bed — a rare achievement for a Wallachian ruler of that period. His 1395 alliance with Sigismund of Hungary and participation in the Crusade of Nicopolis ended in defeat, yet Mircea retained his throne where most of his contemporaries did not.

This denomination was reintroduced following Romania's 2005 currency redenomination, in which 10,000 old lei became 1 new leu.