Philip IV of France

Philip IV reigned from 1285 to 1314, inheriting Navarre through marriage and wielding handsome looks alongside a personality friend and foe alike deemed rigid as iron. He sidelined nobles and clergy in favor of skilled civil servants like Guillaume de Nogaret, waging wars to strip vassals of feudal privileges and reshape France into a centralized monarchy. His ambitions placed relatives on thrones across Europe while at home he warred with Flanders, suffering humiliation at the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302 before ultimately seizing Flemish cities and tribute. Drowning in debt to Jews and Templars, Philip expelled the former in 1306 and destroyed the latter in 1307; his bid to tax the French Church ignited conflict with Pope Boniface VIII, culminating in French forces attacking the papal residence and holding Boniface hostage in 1303 - a blow that eventually moved the papacy to Avignon. The Tour de Nesle affair tainted his final year when his three daughters-in-law faced adultery charges, and after his death in 1314 his three sons ruled in swift, barren succession, their lack of surviving heirs cracking open the crisis that became the Hundred Years' War.