Lothair of France

Lothair reigned over West Francia for more than three decades, longer than any of his dynasty in the west since Charles the Bald. The son of Louis IV d'Outremer and Gerberga of Saxony, he was a nephew of Otto I and thus stood close to the Ottonian dynasty from birth. Crowned at Reims in 954 at about thirteen, he passed his minority under the tutelage first of Hugh the Great, who died in 956, and then under the influence of his maternal uncle Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, who acted as a mediator between the Carolingian court and the Ottonian realm.

His marriage reinforced the same connection. In 966 Lothair wed Emma of Italy, daughter of Adelaide of Italy by her first husband, King Lothair II of Italy; since Adelaide had subsequently married Otto I, the West Frankish queen was the emperor's stepdaughter. The Ottonian alignment did not, however, prevent conflict over Lotharingia, the old Carolingian heartland that Lothair regarded as his family's rightful inheritance.

In 978 he launched a surprise attack on Aachen, hoping to seize Otto II, who escaped shortly before the city was taken. Otto retaliated with a campaign that reached the heights above Paris before withdrawing, and the two kings made peace in 980, with Lothair renouncing his claims to Lotharingia. He returned to Lotharingian ambitions in his final years, taking Verdun in the mid-980s, while at home his authority depended on a careful balance with Hugh Capet, son of Hugh the Great and, through his mother Hedwig of Saxony, himself a nephew of Otto I.

To secure the succession Lothair had his son Louis crowned co-king at Compiègne in 979, the last such association in the West Frankish kingdom. He died at Laon in March 986 and was buried at Saint-Remi in Reims. His reign preserved the dynasty's position without enlarging its modest territorial base, and within two years of his death the long rivalry between Carolingians and Robertians would be decided against his house.