The Christianization of Livonia and Lithuania was carried out by force of arms. However, we know somefigures who became loyal allies of the crusaders, took part in their battles against the pagans, perhaps sometimes their own relatives, and even died in battles against them. One of them was the Livonian noble Kaupo, who had to give one of his sons as a hostage, but after visiting Pope Innocent III in Rome, he never abandoned his new faith. He died in battle in 1217, and on his deathbed he bequeathed all his property to the Church of Riga. He is the only representative of the Livonian tribe known by name, who appears on the pages of 13th-century chronicles: Henry the Latvian, Caesarius von Heisterbach and the Livonian rhymed chronicle. Suxa is almost forgotten, although he is mentioned in a Livonian rhymed chronicle and a diploma about his baptism in 1268 in the Riga cathedral and becoming a vassal of the Bishop of Riga. He died in a fight against the Lithuanians around 1273.

The fight for political supremacy over Riga between knightly orders (originally the Livonian Knights and after 1237 its legal successor, the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order) lasted almost throughout the entire period of the so-called Former Livonia (until 1561) and was often bloody. One of its culminating points were the peace terms imposed on Riga after over 30 years of war (March 30, 1330). Riga had to pay homage to the Order, admit a representative of the Order to the city council, renounced half of the revenues from exercising jurisdiction to the Order, gave the Order a plot of land in the city for the construction of a new monastic castle, was to send a unit of 25 men-at-arms on the Order's expeditions and undertook to fund 5 perpetual vicarages, each worth 6 silver fines, with the right of patronage belonging to the Order to commemorate those killed in the war. The entry of the Order into the city was done throught the hole in city walls as an additional oppression.