Hugh Capet
Hugh Capet was elected King of the Franks in 987 and founded the dynasty that ruled France in the direct line for more than three centuries and in its branches until 1848. Born around 941, he was the son of Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks, the most powerful magnate in the kingdom, and inherited that position in 956. By the late tenth century the Carolingian monarchy retained the title and almost nothing else. Real power lay with the great territorial princes, and the Robertian family to which Hugh belonged had already provided kings and had long been the crown's chief rival. When Louis V died in a hunting accident in 987 without a son, the assembly of nobles at Senlis, guided by Adalbero, Archbishop of Reims, passed over the Carolingian claimant Charles of Lorraine and elected Hugh. Adalbero argued that the throne was not acquired by hereditary right but conferred on merit — an argument Hugh's descendants took care to bury. He was crowned at Noyon in July 987. His first significant act was to have his son Robert crowned as co-king within months, a device his successors repeated for two hundred years, which quietly converted an elective monarchy into a hereditary one without ever saying so. His actual authority was small. The royal demesne was the Île-de-France between Paris and Orléans, and he could not always control the castellans within it; the dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine were far richer. He fought Charles of Lorraine for the throne and captured him by treachery in 991, ending the Carolingian line. He died in 996.
- Lived: 939 CE – 996 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: king, head_of_state
