Best Monarch

King Sejong the Great ruled Korea's Joseon dynasty from 1418 to 1450. He sponsored the creation of Hangul, promulgated in the 1440s as a phonetic writing system that ordinary Koreans could learn more readily than literary Chinese. His reign also supported scholarship, astronomical instruments, agric...

Augustus, born Gaius Octavius and later known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor, ruling from 27 BCE until 14 CE. After defeating Mark Antony and Cleopatra, he ended the civil wars that had dismantled the Roman Republic and established the Principate, a monarchy presented through republican of...

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 was the third Mughal emperor, ruling from 1556 to 1605 and extending Mughal authority across much of northern and central India. He strengthened the empire through military campaigns, administrative reforms, standardized revenue collection, and alliances with Rajput rulers. Although Muslim, he...

Charlemagne was king of the Franks from 768, king of the Lombards from 774, and emperor from 800 until his death in 814. Through conquest and administration, he united much of western and central Europe under Carolingian rule and supported the expansion of Latin Christianity. Pope Leo III crowned hi...

Emperor Taizong was the second emperor of China's Tang dynasty, reigning from 626 to 649 after helping his father establish the dynasty. His Zhenguan reign combined military expansion with comparatively restrained taxation, administrative reform, legal revision, and the recruitment of capable offici...

Elizabeth I was queen of England and Ireland from 1558 until her death in 1603, the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. Her government established a durable Protestant religious settlement while navigating conflict with Catholic powers, including the failed Spanish Armada invasion of 1588. Her reign...

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, commonly called Cyrus the Great, founded the Achaemenid Empire and ruled Persia from about 559 to 530 BCE. Through the conquest of Media, Lydia, and Babylon, he created an empire extending across much of western and central Asia while often retaining local institutions and religious practi...

Suleiman I ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1520 to 1566, leading campaigns in Hungary, the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, and surrounding regions. His forces captured Belgrade and Rhodes, defeated Hungary at Mohacs, and unsuccessfully besieged Vienna in 1529. Known in Ottoman tradition as Kanuni, or the...

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...