Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor

The son of a Franconian count who died around 990, Conrad inherited Speyer and Worms while still young. He built influence beyond those lands, winning favor among the kingdom's princes. When Emperor Henry II died without an heir in 1024, an assembly chose the 34-year-old Conrad as king. He borrowed heavily from his Ottonian predecessors - their church organization, their rulership style, their echo of Charlemagne - but immediately dropped Henry II's favoritism toward churchmen. In Italy he first leaned on German-origin bishops to hold power, then pivoted during his second expedition in 1036 to court the valvassores and military elite who resented those same bishops. When childless Rudolph III of Burgundy died in 1032, Conrad claimed the kingdom, conquered it with German and Italian forces, and folded it into the empire. Germany, Italy, Burgundy: the "royal triad" that defined imperial reach. He died in June 1039, the first of four Salian emperors who would rule until 1125.