date_of_birth rudolph ii of burgundy
Rudolph II ( c . 880 -- July 11 , 937 ) was king of Upper Burgundy ( ___MASK8___ -- 937 ) , Lower Burgundy ( Provence ) ( ___MASK59___ -- 937 ) , and Italy ( effective , 922 -- 926 -- claim abandoned ___MASK59___ ) . He was the son of Rudolph I , king of Upper Burgundy , a member of the Elder House of Welf , and it is presumed that his mother was his father ' s known wife , Guilla of Provence . He married Bertha of Swabia in 922 . Following his ascent to the throne in ___MASK8___ , Rudolph was asked by several Italian nobles to intervene in Italy on their behalf against Emperor Berengar in 922 . Having entered Italy , he was crowned King of the Lombards at Pavia . In 923 , he defeated Berengar at Piacenza ; Berengar was murdered the following year , possibly at the instigation of Rudolph . The king then ruled Upper Burgundy and Italy together , residing alternately in both kingdoms . However , in 926 the Italian nobility turned against him and requested that Hugh of Arles , the effective ruler of Provence ( or Lower Burgundy ) , rule them instead . Rudolph returned to Upper Burgundy to protect himself , assuring Hugh ' s coronation as King of Italy in the process . The two Burgundian kingdoms unified , Rudolph ruled until his death in 937 . He was succeeded by Conrad . After Rudolph ' s death in 937 , his daughter Adelaide was married to Hugh ' s son Lothair , while Hugh married Rudolph ' s widow Bertha . Adelaide later became the second wife of Otto the Great , Holy Roman Emperor , and the mother of Otto II , Holy Roman Emperor . The Kingdom of Italy was a state founded from ___MASK39___ , when King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy , to ___MASK15___ , when a constitutional referendum led civil discontent to abandon the monarchy and form the Italian Republic . The state was founded as a result of the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia , which can be considered its legal predecessor state . The Carolingian dynasty ( known variously as the Carlovingians , Carolingus , Carolings or Karlings ) was a Frankish noble family with origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD . The name " Carolingian " ( Medieval Latin " karolingi ", an altered form of an unattested Old High German word *" karling , kerling ", meaning " descendant of Charles ", cf . MHG " kerlinc ") derives from the Latinised name of Charles Martel : " Carolus ". The dynasty consolidated its power in the mid 8th century , eventually making the offices of mayor of the palace and " dux et princeps Francorum " hereditary , and becoming the " de facto " rulers of the Franks as the real powers behind the Merovingian throne . In ___MASK7___ the Merovingian dynasty , which had ruled the Germanic Franks was overthrown with the consent of the Papacy and the aristocracy , and a Carolingian Pepin the Short was crowned King of the Franks . The Carolingian dynasty reached its peak in ___MASK38___ with the crowning of Charlemagne as the first Emperor of Romans in over three centuries . His death in ___MASK50___ began an extended period of fragmentation of the Carolingian empire and decline that would eventually lead to the evolution of the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire . Provence - Alpes - Côte d ' Azur or PACA is one of the ___MASK4___ administrative regions of France . Its capital is Marseille . Lower Burgundy was a historical kingdom in what is now southeastern France , so - called because it was lower down the Rhone Valley than Upper Burgundy . Lower Burgundy is sometimes called the Kingdom of Arelat or the Kingdom of Cisjurane Burgundy . Flavius Odoacer ( ___MASK18___  ___MASK74___ ), also known as Flavius Odovacer , was a soldier who in 476 became the first King of Italy ( 476  ___MASK74___ ). His reign is commonly seen as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire . Though the real power in Italy was in his hands , he represented himself as the client of Julius Nepos and , after Nepos ' death in 480 , of the Emperor in Constantinople . Odoacer generally used the Roman honorific " patrician ," granted by the Emperor Zeno , but is referred to as a king in many documents and he himself used it at least once and on another occasion it was used by the consul Basilius . Odoacer introduced few important changes into the administrative system of Italy . He had the support of the Roman Senate and was able to distribute land to his followers without much opposition . Unrest among his warriors led to violence in 477  478 , but no such disturbances occurred during the later period of his reign . Although Odoacer was an Arian Christian , he rarely intervened in the affairs of the orthodox and trinitarian state church of the Roman Empire . Provence ( Provençal : " Provença " in classical norm or " Prouvènço " in Mistralian norm ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France , which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône River to the west to the Italian border to the east , and is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the south . It largely corresponds with the modern administrative " région " of Provence - Alpes - Côte d ' Azur , and includes the " départements " of Var , Bouches - du - Rhône , Alpes - de - Haute - Provence and parts of Alpes - Maritimes and Vaucluse . The largest city of the region is Marseille . The Kingdom of Arles (" Arelat ") or Second Kingdom of Burgundy was a Frankish dominion established from lands of the early medieval Kingdom of the Burgundians in ___MASK59___ by the merger of the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Burgundy under King Rudolf II . Franche - Comté ( literally " Free County ", Frainc - Comtou dialect : " Fraintche - Comtè "; ) is a former administrative region and a traditional province of eastern France . Since ___MASK92___ January 2016 , it is part of the new region Bourgogne - Franche - Comté . It is composed of the modern departments of Doubs , Jura , Haute - Saône and the Territoire de Belfort . In ___MASK88___ , its population was ___MASK92___ , ___MASK73___ , 208 . The Duchy of Burgundy existed from ___MASK83___ as a successor of an ancient and prestigious patrimony and a large division of the lands of the Kingdom of the Burgundians . The duchy roughly conforms to the borders and territories of the modern region of Burgundy , but its dukes came to own considerable possession of numerous French and Imperial fiefs further north in the Low Countries collectively known as the Burgundian Netherlands . In its own right , it was one of the larger ducal territories that existed at the time of the emergence of Early Modern Europe from Medieval Europe , reminiscent of the Middle Frankish realm of Lotharingia . France , officially the French Republic , is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories . The European , or metropolitan , area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea , and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean . Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic , Pacific and Indian oceans . France spans and had a total population of almost ___MASK28___ million people as of January 2017 . It is a unitary semi - presidential republic with the capital in Paris , the country ' s largest city and main cultural and commercial centre . Other major urban centres include Marseille , Lyon , Lille , Nice , Toulouse and Bordeaux . The Free County of Burgundy was a medieval county ( from ___MASK23___ to ___MASK81___ ) of the Holy Roman Empire , within the modern region of , whose very name is still reminiscent of the title of its count : (' free count ', denoting imperial immediacy , or ' in French , hence the term ' for his feudal principality ). It should not be confused with the more westerly Duchy of Burgundy , a fiefdom of Francia since ___MASK45___ . The Kingdom of Upper Burgundy was a Frankish dominion established in ___MASK34___ by the Welf king Rudolph I of Burgundy on the territory of former Middle Francia . It grew out of the Carolingian margraviate of Transjurane Burgundy (" Transjurania ") southeast of (' beyond ') the Jura Mountains together with the adjacent County of Burgundy (" Franche - Comté ") in the northwest . The adjective ' upper ' refers to its location further up the Rhône river , as distinct from Lower Burgundy ( Cisjurane Burgundy and Provence ) and also from the Duchy of Burgundy west of the Saône river . Upper Burgundy was reunited with the Kingdom of Lower Burgundy in 933 , and eventually merged into the Imperial Kingdom of Arles (" Arelat "). Middle Francia was a short - lived ( ___MASK45___ - 855 ) Frankish kingdom which was created in ___MASK45___ by the Treaty of Verdun after an intermittent civil war between the grandsons of Charlemagne resulted in division of the united empire . Middle Francia was allocated to emperor Lothair I , the eldest son and successor of emperor Louis the Pious . His realm contained the imperial cities of Aachen , the residence of Charlemagne , as well as Pavia but lacked any geographic or ethnic cohesion which prevented it from surviving and forming a nucleus of a larger state , as was the case with West Francia and East Francia . In historiography , the Western Roman Empire consists of the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any one time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court , coequal with ( or only nominally subordinate to ) that administering the eastern half . Both " Western Roman Empire " and " Eastern Roman Empire " ( or " Byzantine Empire ") are modern terms describing " de facto " independent entities ; however , at no point did Romans consider the Empire split into two , but rather considered it a single state governed by two separate Imperial courts out of administrative expediency . The view that the Empire was impossible to govern by one emperor was established by Diocletian following the disastrous civil wars and disintegration of the Crisis of the 3rd century , and was instituted in Roman law by his introduction of the Tetrarchy in AD ___MASK51___ , a form of government which was legally to endure in one form or another for centuries . The Western Court was periodically abolished and recreated for the next two centuries until final abolition by the Emperor Zeno in 480 , by which time there was little effective central control left in the area legally administered by the Western Court . The Elder House of Welf was a Frankish noble dynasty of European rulers documented since the 9th century . Closely related to the Carolingian dynasty , it consisted of a Burgundian and a Swabian group . It has not been definitively clarified , however , whether the two groups formed one dynasty or whether they shared the same name by coincidence only . While the Elder House became extinct in the male line with the death of Duke Welf of Carinthia in ___MASK77___ , his sister Kunigunde married into the Italian House of Este and became the ancestor of the ( Younger ) House of Welf . King of Italy ( Latin : " Rex Italiae "; Italian : " Re d ' Italia ") was the title given to the ruler of the Kingdom of Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire . The first to take the title was Odoacer , a " barbarian " military leader , in the late 5th century , followed by the Ostrogothic kings up to the mid - 6th century . With the Frankish conquest of Italy in the 8th century , the Carolingians assumed the title , which was maintained by subsequent Holy Roman Emperors throughout the Middle Ages . The last Emperor to claim the title was Charles V in the 16th century . During this period , the holders of the title were crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy . Rudolph I ( ___MASK94___  October 25 , 912 ) was King of Upper Burgundy from his election in ___MASK34___ until his death .