Yaroslav the Wise

Born around 978 to Vladimir the Great and Rogneda of Polotsk, Yaroslav moved through a string of provincial postings - Rostov, then Novgorod in 1010 - before openly defying his father by withholding tribute in 1014. Vladimir's death the next year pitched Yaroslav into a grinding succession fight against his half-brother Sviatopolk; he won the throne in 1019 and held it until 1054. As Grand Prince he pivoted Kiev's foreign policy toward Scandinavia and away from Byzantine orbit, seized the land around present-day Tartu and built the fort of Yuryev, and threw up a line of fortifications to blunt Pecheneg raids from the steppe. He bankrolled Saint Sophia Cathedral in 1037 and backed Hilarion of Kiev's composition of the first major Old East Slavic literary work. His children married into royal houses across Europe; he urged them to live in peace and avoid the kind of fracture that had nearly destroyed him. After his death on 20 February 1054 his body went into a sarcophagus at Saint Sophia, though the remains have since vanished.