Louis VI (1 December 1081 – 1 August 1137), called
the Fat , was
King of the Franks from 1108 until his death (1137). Chronicles called him "roi de Saint-Denis". Louis was the first member of the
House of Capet to make a lasting contribution to the centralizing institutions of royal power, He spent almost all of his twenty-nine-year reign fighting either the "
robber barons" who plagued Paris or the
Norman kings of England for their continental possession of
Normandy. Nonetheless, Louis VI managed to reinforce his power considerably and became one of the first strong kings of France since the division of the
Carolingian Empire in 843.