only with the help of the large nobles and Otto I. In 942 Louis gave up Lotharingia to Otto I. Succession conflict in Normandy led to a new war in which Louis was betrayed by Hugh the Great and captured by Danish prince Harald who eventually released him to the custody of Hugh, who freed the king only after receiving town of Laon as a compensation. The last Carolingians: Lothair and Louis V The 13-year old Lothair of France inherited all the lands of his father in 954. By this time they were so small that the Carolingian practice of dividing lands among the sons was not followed and his brother Charles received nothing. In 966 Lothair married Emma, stepdaughter of his maternal uncle Otto I. Despite this, in August 978 Lothair attacked the old imperial capital Aachen. Otto II retaliated by attacking Paris, but was defeated by the combined forces of king Lothar and nobles and peace was signed in 980, ending the brief Franco-German war. Lothar managed to increase his power, but this was reversed with the coming of age of Hugh Capet, who began forming new alliances of nobles and eventually was elected as king in 987 after Lothair and his son and successor Louis V of France had both died prematurely, traditionally marking the end of the French branch of Carolingian dynasty as well as the end of West Francia as a kingdom. Hugh Capet would be the first ruler of a new royal house, the House of Capet, who would rule France through the High Middle Ages. List of kings Charles the Bald (843–877) Louis the Stammerer (877–879) Louis III of France (879–882) Carloman II (882–884) Charles the Fat (885–888) Odo of France (888–898) Charles the Simple (898–922) Robert I of France (922–923) Rudolph of France (923–936) Louis IV of France (936–954) Lothair of France (954–986) Louis V of France (986–987) Notes References Jim Bradbury. The Capetians: Kings of France, 987–1328. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007. Simon Coupland. "The Coinages of Pippin I and II of Aquitaine" Revue numismatique, 6th series, 31 (1989), 194–222. Geoffrey Koziol. "Charles the Simple, Robert of Neustria, and the vexilla of Saint-Denis". Early Medieval Europe 14:4 (2006), 355–90. Archibald R. Lewis. The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718–1050. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965. Simon MacLean. Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the