Philip I of France

Philip became King of the Franks around 1060, inheriting a monarchy at low ebb from his father Henry I. Over a reign that stretched to 48 years — extraordinary for the era — he began a modest recovery of royal power, adding the Vexin region and the viscountcy of Bourges to the crown's holdings. The expansion was real but incremental, the kind of patient territorial accumulation that defined the early Capetians. He died on 29 July 1108, having outlasted most of his contemporaries and earned a sobriquet that had nothing to do with conquest.