Rupert III of the Palatinate

Rupert III was Elector Palatine for twelve years and then an elected king of Germany who could never afford to be one. He succeeded his father in the Palatinate in 1398, and in August 1400 four of the seven prince-electors met at Oberlahnstein, declared Wenceslaus of Bohemia deposed for negligence, uselessness and the disorder of the empire, and chose Rupert in his place the following day. The deposition was of doubtful legality and Wenceslaus never accepted it, which left the empire with two claimants for the rest of Rupert's life. He was crowned at Cologne rather than Aachen because Aachen shut its gates to him. His central problem was money: the Palatinate's revenues were modest, the imperial cities and princes owed him little, and the crown carried almost no independent income. He nevertheless attempted the traditional programme, marching into Italy in 1401 to be crowned emperor by the pope and to break Gian Galeazzo Visconti's power in Lombardy. The Milanese beat him at Brescia, his Florentine subsidies ran out, and he came home having achieved nothing. He supported the Roman pope through the Great Schism and sent representatives to the Council of Pisa in 1409, which produced a third pope and made the schism worse. Within Germany he governed the Palatinate competently, founded nothing on the imperial scale, and left the crown weaker than he found it. He died in 1410 and the electors chose Sigismund of Luxembourg, Wenceslaus's half-brother, which resolved the double claim by keeping it in the family.

• Lived: 1352 CE – 1410 CE
• Nationality: German
• Roles: ruler