Empire: Plantagenet Domain at its Height

When we say the Plantagenets had an empire, it's a relative term.  In comparison to Rome or even Napoleon Bonaparte, they may have been small potatoes.  But in their heyday (1154-1249), they were one of the more powerful monarchies in Europe.

The Plantagenets started out as counts of Anjou, a small county in the lower Loire Valley, France based on the town of Angers.  It's from this county that the early Plantagenets get their other common historical name, Angevins.  Geoffrey, Count of Anjou (1113-1151) and father of Henry II (1133-1189), had a claim to the English throne through his wife, known as Empress Matilda (1102-1167).  However, at the time, England was considered a backwater.  The territory that was worth anything lay on the European continent and there were only two ways to get that real estate in one's possession, marriage and conquest.  Henry II was capable of both, securing his claims to England and marrying the wealthiest heiress of her day, Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine (1122-1204) in her own right.  That brought a large swath of Southern and Coastal France into the Plantagenet dominions.  Though Eleanor was Duchess of Acquitaine, it was understood under the conventions of the time that her husband and sons would take the lion's share of ruling it for her, a bone of constant contention between Eleanor and her husband.

From here, Henry II steadily acquired yet more French countryside, including the valuable seaport of Calais, which the English managed to hold until the reign of Mary Tudor (1553-58).  Thus, at its height, the Angevin Empire stretched from the Pyrenees to the border of Scotland (and maybe into Scotland, from the standpoint of any right-thinking Plantagenet King, just ask Edward I, 1239-1307), as well as most of Ireland.  Though he'd been crowned in London in an elaborate ceremony, for the time and given Henry's low tolerance level of fuss, he spent little time in London.  The capitals of the empire were Henry's native Anger and Chinon in 1183, which is where the Lion in Winter shows the family at its reality-show finest, squabbling over who would rule what at Henry's death.  In those days, it wasn't a guarantee that the eldest child, who was Geoffrey (1158-1186) at this point, would get everything.  Eleanor wanted Richard (1157-1199) to have Aquitaine and neither parent was willing to give John (1166-1216) very much other than Ireland, maybe.

In the end, John inherited the lot after his elder brothers Henry (the Young King, 1155-1183), Geoffrey and Richard died.  Then, he lived up to his nickname of John Lackland.  The 1214 Battle of Bouvines brought the loss of Normandy and the Plantagenet home county of Anjou.  In the 1429 Treaty of Paris, John's son Henry III (1207-1272) would be forced to relinquish all title to Anjou, Poitou, Maine and Normandy.  Bits and pieces of territory fell away over the years.  And they never got it back, keeping only Calais and the area around that city known as the Pale, though they would spend an entire war known as the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) trying.  Finally, Calais was lost (1558) but in a peculiar twist of history, the Kings of England continued to title themselves King of England, Ireland and France, the Stuart (1603-1714) dynasty placing the most emphasis on this title.  It wasn't until the time of the French Revolution (1789-1799) that George III, otherwise not known for his grip on reality, finally recognized the obvious and quit claiming France.  An empire that had once contained the modern countries of Belgium, portions of France, Guernsey, Ireland, Jersey, and the United Kingdom was over at last, hundreds of years after it had really crumbled.