House of Plantagenet

The House of Anjou-Plantagenêt (French [ɑ̃ˈʒu-ˌplɑ̃taʒ'nɛ], English [ɑːn'ʤuː-plæn'tæʤənɪt]) was a French-born ruling dynasty that provided kings of England in the direct line from 1154 to 1399 and in the collateral lines of Lancaster and York until 1485.

Alongside the French ruling dynasty of the Capetians and the imperial houses of the Ottonians, Salians and Hohenstaufen, the Plantagenets are among the most important Western European dynasties of the High Middle Ages. At the time of their greatest development of power, the family ruled over the Angevin Empire, which included not only England but also the duchies of Normandy, Brittany, Aquitaine, the counties of Anjou, Maine and Touraine as well as other parts of the Kingdom of France.

To this day, the House of Plantagenet continues in male lineage in the line of the Dukes of Beaufort, descended from the bastard line of the same name.

Origin and name

Justification of the House of Anjou

The Plantagenet dynasty can be traced back in its direct male lineage to Gottfried Ferréol, who is attested in the 11th century as Count of the French countryside of Gâtinais. He was probably himself a member of the clan from which the vice counts of Châteaudun and counts of Le Perche had emerged. Through his marriage to the heiress of the county ofAnjou, Gottfried Ferréol secured for his descendants the possession of this feudal principality, which was already important in western France in his day. Already in the first half of the 12th century, the family rose to royal dignities, namely in the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem.

After Anjou, the family was usually referred to simply as the "Angevin dynasty" or "House of Anjou" during the Middle Ages. It should not be confused with later dynasties of the same name, which descended from the French royal dynasty of the Capetians - for this, see older House of Anjou (Anjou-Capet) and younger House of Anjou (Valois-Anjou).

Count Gottfried Plantagenet

Count Gottfried V of Anjou († 1151), to whom chroniclers ascribed the epithet "Plantagenet" even during his lifetime, is considered the eponym and actual progenitor of the House of Plantagenet. This probably goes back to the count's habit of wearing a broom branch (Latin: planta genista; French: plante genêt) as a helmet decoration. However, it is also possible that the epithet derives from the fact that Gottfried planted gorse bushes on his estates to protect himself from view when hunting.

With Count Gottfried Plantagenet began the rise of his family to the leading dynasty in France alongside the Capetians, of which it was formally a vassal. Through his marriage to the heiress of the Anglo-Norman Empire, the "Empress" Matilda, the Angevins secured a claim to the Duchy of Normandy and the Kingdom of England, which they first had to assert against the House of Blois in a war of succession (The Anarchy), however. Gottfried Plantagenet conquered Normandy in 1144, and his son, after a treaty settlement with King Stephen in 1154, was finally able to ascend the English throne as King Henry II Short, which his descendants held continuously until 1485.

Throughout the High Middle Ages and into the Late Middle Ages, the name "Plantagenet" was applied solely in reference to Gottfried V of Anjou and not to the family descended from him. It was only during the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485), when the Angevin collateral lines of Lancaster and York were fighting for the crown of England, that this name was brought out to consolidate claims to rule. Duke Richard of York († 1460), head of the House of York, adopted the name Plantagenet in 1448 to bolster his claim to the throne against the ruling House of Lancaster. From then on, this name became retroactively accepted in historical literature for the entire royal dynasty from King Henry II onwards.

Portrait of Gottfried Plantagenet, originally from Le Mans Cathedral, enamel, Carré Plantagenêt, Musée d'archéologie et d'histoire 23-1.

Historical significance

Gottfried's son Henry II Kurzmantel, through his marriage to the Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine, completed the amalgamation of the essential territories that today are collectively referred to as the "AngevinEmpire". This territorial conglomerate dominated not only England and its Scots-Irish neighbours but also the whole of western France, thus constituting for a period of two generations one of the most important state entities of the High Middle Ages in Europe. The Angevin dynasty was at times more powerful than the French kings of the Capetian dynasty, to whom they were formally bound to allegiance as vassals for their French possessions. However, this loose structure, supported solely by the feudal state idea, already broke down during the reign of Johann Ohneland, the youngest son of Henry II, who lost almost all French possessions, including the Angevin ancestral lands, to the French crown in a war with the French king Philip II in 1204.

With the exception of a French fiefdom, the Duchy of Guyenne (Gascony), Angevin rule was henceforth restricted to the English kingdom, which in the further course of the 13th century was reflected in the formation of an insular mentality, an English national consciousness, among the French-born royal family and nobility. During the reign of King Henry III, decisive constitutional groundwork was laid which initiated the development of the parliamentary system so characteristic of England today. Through his maternal descent from the Capetians, King Edward III was able to lay claim to the French throne in 1337, although the French succession precluded such claims being inherited through the female line (Salic Law). Ultimately, this triggered the Hundred Years' War, which once again closely linked England and its royal house to the historical fate of France.

In 1400, King Richard II, the last direct Plantagenet, died and was succeeded by his cousin Henry IV, a paternal grandson of Edward III, of the House of Lancaster. By the middle of the 15th century, the Hundred Years' War came to an end without the English kings gaining the crown of France, although they maintained their claim to it in their titles for several centuries. This was accompanied by the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses, a war of succession between the House of Lancaster and their cousins from the House of York, who were also descended from a son of Edward III. The last Plantagenet king of England was Richard III of the House of York. He fell on August 22, 1485, at the Battle of BosworthField, the final clash of the Wars of the Roses, against his rival Henry Tudor, who subsequently ascended the throne as Henry VII, thus establishing the rule of the House of Tudor.