Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor

Born in November 912, Otto inherited the kingship of the Germans and the Duchy of Saxony when his father Henry the Fowler died in 936. He immediately set about reducing the duchies - formerly co-equals - to subjects, installing family members in key positions and subjecting the church to royal control. A brief civil war among rebellious dukes tested him early, but his decisive victory over the pagan Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 cast him as the savior of Christendom and locked down his authority. By 961 he'd conquered Italy; a year later Pope John XII crowned him Holy Roman Emperor in Rome, echoing Charlemagne's coronation in 800. His final years were consumed by clashes with the papacy and efforts to stabilize Italy, though a marriage alliance between his son Otto II and the Byzantine princess Theophanu in 972 eased tensions with Constantinople. He returned to Germany that August and died at Memleben in May 973, leaving behind an empire too vast for its own administrative skeleton but large enough to make Germany the preeminent power in Europe for three centuries.