Louis V of France

Louis V ( – 22 May 987), also known as Louis the Do-Nothing, was a king of West Francia from 979 (co-reigning first with his father Lothair until 986) to his early death in 987. During his reign, the nobility essentially ruled the country. Dying childless, Louis V was the last Carolingian monarch in West Francia. Youth Louis was born . He was the eldest son of King Lothair of France, the Carolingian ruler of France, and Queen Emma, daughter of King Lothair II of Italy and Empress Adelaide. Louis was associated to the government by his father in 978 and crowned co-king on 8 June 979 at the Abbey of Saint-Corneille in Compiègne by Archbishop Adalbero of Reims. Marriage In 982 at Vieille-Brioude, Haute-Loire, the fifteen-year-old Louis was married to the forty-year-old Adelaide-Blanche of Anjou, sister of Count Geoffrey I and twice a widow from her previous marriages with Count Stephen of Gévaudan and Count Raymond of Toulouse, Prince of Gothia. This union was purely political and arranged by the king – following the advice of Queen Emma and Count Geoffrey I – with the double purpose of restoring the Carolingian royal power in the south of the kingdom, and (according to Richerus) to obtain the support of the local southern lords in his fight against the Robertians. Being related by marriage to two of the most powerful southern comital families of the Kingdom, Lothair believed that he could confront the power of Hugh Capet. Immediately after their wedding, Louis and Adelaide-Blanche were crowned king and queen of Aquitaine by Adelaide's brother Bishop Guy of le Puy. From the very beginning, however, the mismatched couple was unable to live peacefully together, not only due to the notorious age difference between them, but (according to Richerus) also because of Louis' debauched lifestyle: