Their ruler dies, and there's a succession battle, and the various city states around Lake Texcoco take sides. What eventually happens is Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan form what is known as a triple alliance or the triple alliance, and are able to conquer the Azcapotzalco, and so in conquering the Azcapotzalco, what you have forming is known as the Aztec Empire. Now it starts as an alliance between these three city states and other city states in the area, but over time, Tenochtitlan, which is sometimes referred to as Mexico-Tenochtitlan, because it is a city state of the Mexico people, and this is where the name Mexico or Mexico actually comes from. Now even though it's an alliance, over time, Tenochtitlan essentially becomes the capital of this alliance or the capital of this Aztec Empire, which continues on for roughly 100 years until 1521, when it is defeated by Hernando Cortes. Now the story of how Hernando Cortes is able to conquer this empire is fascinating, and I'm not going to be able to go into all of the details in this video, but needless to say, he's able to convince several hundred conquistadors to come and try to conquer the empire, and he's able to do so by recruiting tens of thousands, some estimates I've seen are 100,000 soldiers from neighboring city states who had issues with the Mexico or with the Aztec Empire, and so he's eventually able to take over the famed city of Tenochtitlan. And it's really important to recognize how advanced they were at the time. You see these causeways, these bridges, leading into the island.