James I of Aragon

James I the Conqueror (1208 to 1276) was the eleventh King of Aragon, thirty-eighth Count of Barcelona and Lord of Montpellier from 1213 to 1276, King of Majorca from 1231 and King of Valencia from 1238. His reign of 62 years is the longest of any Iberian monarch. He expanded the Crown of Aragon to Languedoc, the Balearic Islands and Valencia, and the source describes him as a legislator and organiser of high standing among European kings. He compiled the Llibre del Consolat de Mar, the code that governed maritime trade and helped establish Aragonese supremacy in the western Mediterranean, and he sponsored Catalan literature and wrote a quasi-autobiographical chronicle, the Llibre dels fets.