Moctezuma II

Moctezuma Xocoyotzin became the ninth emperor of the Aztec Empire around 1502, inheriting a military machine he pushed to its limit. Through warfare he extended the territory south to Chiapas and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, folding the Zapotec and Yopi into an empire that reached its greatest size under his watch. He tightened the social order, banning commoners from royal palaces and widening the gap between nobles and everyone else. In 1519 the first contact between Mesoamerica and Europe arrived in the form of Cortés and his men, who seized Tenochtitlan and killed Moctezuma on 29 June 1520 during the opening phase of the conquest. Two successors tried to hold the throne after him but the empire collapsed quickly. Whether he died by Spanish or native hands remains disputed, as does his character: the Spanish called him weak and superstitious, while other accounts split between a tyrant grasping for absolute control and a skilled leader trying to hold a nation together as it came apart.