Louis V

The last Carolingian to occupy the West Frankish throne, Louis V was the son of King Lothair and Emma of Italy, and through his grandmothers was connected to both the Ottonian house and the Italian royal line. His father had him crowned co-king at Compiègne in 979, while still a boy, in order to guarantee the succession, and he became sole king on Lothair's death in March 986.

In 982 Louis had been married to Adelaide-Blanche of Anjou, a widow considerably older than himself, in an arrangement intended to extend Carolingian influence into Aquitaine. The marriage failed within a few years and was dissolved, leaving the king without children, a circumstance that would prove decisive for the dynasty.

His sole reign lasted little more than a year and was dominated by a quarrel with Adalbero, archbishop of Reims, whom the king accused of treasonable dealings with the Ottonian court and summoned to answer before an assembly at Compiègne. Before the case could be heard, Louis died in May 987 from injuries suffered in a hunting accident near Senlis. He was about twenty years old and was buried at Compiègne.

His death without heirs ended Carolingian kingship in the west. The obvious dynastic claimant, his uncle Charles, duke of Lower Lorraine, was passed over by the assembled magnates, who at Senlis elected Hugh Capet, head of the Robertian house and son of Hedwig of Saxony, sister of Otto I. The choice transferred the crown to the family that had contested it with the Carolingians since the days of Odo of Paris, and the line of Hugh Capet would hold the French throne for centuries. Charles of Lorraine fought on for several years to recover his family's kingdom but was captured in 991, and with his imprisonment the political history of the Carolingian dynasty in West Francia effectively closed.