Lothair of France - Regency

Regency

He succeeded his father in 954 at the age of thirteen and crowned at Rheims on 12 November 954. He was at first under the guardianship of Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks and Count of Paris, who had been an adversary to his father but nonetheless was appointed guardian of the king's estates, though not as regent for the young king who assumed his royal dignities at thirteen. This gave the young Lothair the opportunity to come to know his guardian's heir, the sixteen year old Hugh Capet, before his father's death in 956; Capet later became king and founder of the Capetian Dynasty.

The beginning of his reign was occupied with wars against the vassals, particularly against the duke of Normandy, and it should be made clear that the monarch of Western Francia was more a ceremonial title, more of a first among equals status, than that state which would represent the later centralised authority meant by monarchies of earlier and later historical epochs.

In 955, Lothair and Hugh together took Poitiers by siege. Hugh died soon after and Lothair mediated between his sons, the aforementioned Hugh Capet and the younger Otto Henry. The king gave Capet Paris and the ducal title, but invested Otto with the Duchy of Burgundy in 960. With young Hugh the new count of Paris et al., Lothair, now only fifteen, came under the guardianship of his maternal uncle Bruno, archbishop of Cologne.