Hugh the Great Duke of the Franks

Hugh the Great (c.898-956), Duke of the Franks, was the most powerful magnate in tenth-century France; the maker and unmaker of kings. Son of one king and nephew of another, he twice declined the crown himself, preferring to install Carolingians he could manage while accumulating Neustria, Burgundy and Aquitaine in title or fact. The patience paid a generation later: his son Hugh Capet took the throne in 987 and founded the dynasty that ruled France for eight hundred years. We descend from him through Hugh Capet and through his daughter's line as well.