Best Monarch

Born Gaius Octavius and later known as Octavian, Augustus became the first Roman emperor, ruling from 27 BCE until 14 CE. His defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra brought the Republic's prolonged civil wars to an end. The political order he established, the Principate, concentrated monarchical power...

Ashoka was the third ruler of the Maurya Empire, reigning over much of the Indian subcontinent from about 268 to 232 BCE. After the destructive conquest of Kalinga, he publicly embraced Buddhist principles and promoted moral conduct, religious tolerance, public welfare, and nonviolence through inscr...

Akbar, the third Mughal emperor, ruled from 1556 to 1605 and extended imperial authority across much of northern and central India. Military campaigns worked alongside administrative reforms and standardized revenue collection. Alliances with Rajput rulers helped strengthen an empire governing popul...

Charlemagne became king of the Franks in 768 and king of the Lombards in 774, then held the imperial title from 800 until his death in 814. Conquest and administration brought much of western and central Europe under Carolingian rule. His expansion supported Latin Christianity, while also relying on...

The second emperor of China's Tang dynasty, Taizong ruled from 626 to 649 after helping his father establish the dynasty. His Zhenguan reign combined military expansion with administrative reform and legal revision. Comparatively restrained taxation and the recruitment of capable officials formed pa...

Elizabeth I ruled England and Ireland from 1558 until her death in 1603, closing the Tudor dynasty. Her government established a durable Protestant religious settlement while managing internal religious divisions and conflict with Catholic powers. The failure of the Spanish Armada in 1588 became a d...

King Alfred the Great (849–899) was the Anglo-Saxon King of Wessex who halted the Viking conquest of England, promoted literacy and legal reform, and is the only English monarch to be called 'the Great'.

Cyrus II, known as Cyrus the Great, founded the Achaemenid Empire and ruled Persia from about 559 to 530 BCE. His conquests of Media, Lydia, and Babylon created an empire spanning much of western and central Asia. In governing conquered territories, he often retained local institutions and religious...

Suleiman I governed the Ottoman Empire from 1520 to 1566, combining extensive military campaigns with legal and administrative consolidation. His forces captured Belgrade and Rhodes and defeated Hungary at Mohács. The unsuccessful siege of Vienna in 1529 marks an important limit within a reign that...

Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui was the ninth Sapa Inca and ruled during the fifteenth century, traditionally from 1438 to 1471. He reorganized the Inca state and began the conquests that transformed it into Tawantinsuyu, an empire spanning much of the Andes. He is also associated with major building progra...

Trajan was Roman emperor from 98 to 117 CE and the second ruler conventionally included among the Nerva-Antonine emperors. His campaigns resulted in the annexation of Dacia and territories in Arabia, Armenia, and Mesopotamia, bringing the Roman Empire to its greatest territorial extent, although som...

Emperor Meiji reigned over Japan from 1867 to 1912, during the political transformation known as the Meiji Restoration. Authority was formally restored to the imperial institution as the Tokugawa shogunate and feudal domains were dismantled, although policy was largely directed by senior statesmen....

Marcus Aurelius was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 CE, ruling first alongside Lucius Verus and later alongside his son Commodus. His reign was marked by warfare on the empire's frontiers, the Antonine plague, and the administrative demands of governing a large imperial state. He is also known for the...

Mehmed II was an Ottoman sultan who reigned from 1444 to 1446 and again from 1451 to 1481. On May 29, 1453, his forces captured Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire and establishing the city as the Ottoman capital. He repopulated and rebuilt the city, centralized imperial authority, sponsored...

Saladin, born Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, was a Kurdish military leader who founded the Ayyubid dynasty and ruled Egypt and Syria as sultan during the twelfth century. He united substantial Muslim territories and defeated a Crusader army at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, enabling his forces to reca...

Darius I ruled the Achaemenid Persian Empire from 522 to 486 BCE. He consolidated and expanded the empire, organized its territories into provinces governed by satraps, and developed systems of taxation, record keeping, and royal communication across a vast multilingual state. His reign is associate...

The Kangxi Emperor ruled Qing China from 1661 to 1722, giving him the longest recorded reign of any Chinese emperor. During his rule, Qing forces defeated the Revolt of the Three Feudatories, incorporated Taiwan, and concluded the Treaty of Nerchinsk with Russia. He also sponsored scholarship and ma...

Frederick II was king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786 and a member of the Hohenzollern dynasty. His seizure of Silesia from Austria triggered prolonged conflict, while Prussia's survival against a larger coalition during the Seven Years' War established it as a major European power. Frederick also reor...

Umar ibn al-Khattab was the second caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, ruling from 634 until his death in 644. During his leadership, Muslim armies defeated major Byzantine and Sasanian forces and brought territories including Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and much of Persia under caliphal rule. Islamic histori...

Thutmose III was a pharaoh of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty who reigned in the fifteenth century BCE, initially alongside his stepmother and co-ruler Hatshepsut. After her death, he conducted repeated campaigns in the Levant, including the documented Battle of Megiddo, and extended Egyptian influence i...

King William I (c. 1028–1087), the Conqueror, was the Norman duke who invaded England and defeated King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, fundamentally transforming English language, culture, and governance.

Philip II was king of Macedon from 359 to 336 BCE and the father of Alexander the Great. He transformed Macedonia into a dominant military power through diplomacy, siegecraft, cavalry, and an infantry formation equipped with the long pike known as the sarissa. After defeating an alliance led by Athe...

Peter I ruled Russia from 1682 to 1725, first as tsar and later under the title emperor, and pursued extensive military, administrative, and cultural reforms. He created a regular army and navy, reorganized government, promoted technical education, and required sections of the elite to adopt Western...

Robert I, commonly called Robert the Bruce, was King of Scots from 1306 until his death in 1329 and a central leader in the Wars of Scottish Independence. His forces defeated the army of Edward II of England at Bannockburn in 1314, strengthening his position within Scotland and abroad. English recog...

Ramesses II was a pharaoh of Egypt's Nineteenth Dynasty who reigned for more than six decades during the thirteenth century BCE. He fought the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh and later concluded a surviving Egyptian-Hittite peace treaty, one of the earliest such agreements known from written record...

Chandragupta Maurya founded the Maurya Empire in the late fourth century BCE after overthrowing the Nanda dynasty and gaining control of Magadha. He established an empire that covered much of the Indian subcontinent and defeated or reached a settlement with Seleucus I Nicator in the northwest. Greek...

Constantine I, commonly called Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from 306 to 337 CE and became sole ruler of the empire in 324. He and Licinius issued the agreement conventionally called the Edict of Milan in 313, which established religious toleration and restored property confiscated from C...

Hammurabi was the sixth king of Babylon's First Dynasty and ruled during the eighteenth century BCE. Through warfare and diplomacy, he brought much of Mesopotamia under Babylonian control, although his empire fragmented after his death. He is chiefly known for the Code of Hammurabi, a collection of...

Hadrian was Roman emperor from 117 to 138 CE and a member of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty. Rather than pursuing sustained territorial expansion, he traveled extensively through the provinces, inspected the army, and strengthened imperial frontiers. Construction of Hadrian's Wall in northern Britain be...