Yaroslav the Wise
Yaroslav the Wise brought Kievan Rus to its height, issued its first law code, and then divided it among his sons in a way that guaranteed it would come apart. He took the throne after a four-year civil war against his brothers that followed Vladimir's death - the usual Rurikid succession, which had no rule of primogeniture and settled itself by fighting - and ruled from 1019 to 1054, for part of that time sharing the realm with a surviving brother rather than beating him. What he built was a state that Europe took seriously. He beat the Pechenegs decisively in 1036 and ended the steppe threat for a generation, built the cathedral of Saint Sophia in Kiev in conscious imitation of Constantinople, founded the first library and schools, and imported Byzantine churchmen while also appointing the first native metropolitan without asking Constantinople. He issued the Russkaya Pravda, the earliest Russian law code, which fixed compensation for injury and killing in place of the blood feud. His diplomacy was conducted by marriage on a scale that earned him the title father-in-law of Europe: his daughters married the kings of France, Hungary and Norway, his sister the king of Poland, and his sons into Byzantium and Germany. The weakness was structural. He left the realm divided among five sons under a rota system in which princes moved between towns by seniority, an arrangement that turned every death into a general reshuffle and every disappointed nephew into a claimant. Within a century there were a dozen effectively independent principalities, and the Mongols met them one at a time. His remains were examined in the twentieth century and disappeared during the Second World War; the sarcophagus in Saint Sophia was found empty when reopened in 2009. He is claimed as a founding figure by Ukraine, Russia and Belarus alike, which is the usual fate of anything Kievan. His face appears on the Ukrainian two-hryvnia note.
- Lived: 978 CE – 1054 CE
- Nationality: Russian
- Roles: ruler
