A war about who was king
Battles dominate popular accounts of the Hundred Years’ War, but at its root the conflict was a quarrel between royal families. To follow it, it helps to leave the battlefield for a while and look at the claims themselves: who held which title, what each side said the law was, and why both kings believed they were in the right.
Two crowns with a shared history
After the Norman Conquest of 1066, the kings of England were also dukes of Normandy, and later the Angevin kings built up a vast collection of French lands. Much of this was lost to the French crown in the early 1200s, especially under Philip II Augustus and King John. By the 1300s the English king’s main continental holding was Gascony, the southern part of the old duchy of Aquitaine.
This arrangement created a built-in rivalry. The English king ruled a sovereign kingdom but also held land in France as the vassal of the French king. Doing homage meant kneeling to someone who was in other respects his equal. Questions about how humble the homage must be, and whether French royal officials could hear appeals from Gascony, were a recurring source of friction. The ideas of oath of fealty and feudal obligations that shaped ordinary landholding had awkward results when applied to kings.
The crisis of 1328
The immediate crisis came with the end of the direct Capetian line. Philip IV, called Philip the Fair, had three sons who each became king in turn. All died without surviving male heirs, and the third, Charles IV, died in 1328. His wife was pregnant, and it was agreed that if the child were a boy he would be king. It was a girl, and the question of succession had to be settled.
There were several possible claimants:
- Edward III of England, then only fifteen, the son of Isabella, the sister of the last three kings. His claim came through a woman.
- Philip of Valois, a cousin of the last kings, whose claim came through the male line.
- Other princes, including the king of Navarre, who had a claim through female descent that was later raised.
An assembly of French nobles and lawyers favored Philip of Valois, who became Philip VI. The argument that women could not pass on the throne was applied, although whether it was an established rule before 1328 is doubtful, since there had been no earlier need to test it. Historians generally see the decision as practical politics: the French nobles preferred a French-born king to a foreign one. Edward, at this stage, accepted the outcome and did homage to Philip for Aquitaine in 1329.
From dispute to claim
Edward’s claim lay dormant for years and was revived when other quarrels intensified. Philip VI gave refuge to David II of Scotland, an enemy of England, and the two kings argued over Gascony. They also differed over the cloth towns of Flanders, where English wool exports mattered. In 1337 Philip declared the duchy of Aquitaine forfeit, and Edward responded by asserting his own right to the French crown. In early 1340 he formally took the title king of France and added the French royal arms to his own. This was partly legal strategy: as claimant to the throne he could argue that French vassals who followed him were acting lawfully, and it helped win allies in the Low Countries.
Rival families, rival loyalties
Later phases show how royal ties continued to shape events. The Treaty of Bretigny in 1360 tried to settle the claim by trading it for land. Charles V and his successors did not accept the loss of French authority over Aquitaine. Henry V, from the Lancaster family, revived the English claim in a different form in 1415, using the unstable situation in France as his opportunity. Charles VI, who suffered long episodes of mental illness, was at the center of a quarrel between the Burgundian and Orleanist branches of the royal family, and the English exploited it.
In 1420 the Treaty of Troyes named Henry V as the heir to Charles VI, replacing the dauphin. After Henry’s death in 1422 his infant son Henry VI was recognized as king of France in the English-held regions and was crowned in Paris in 1431. His French rival, Charles VII, had been crowned in 1429 at Reims, the traditional coronation city, which gave his claim a ritual weight that the English could not match.
What made the claims believable
Medieval kings relied on a mixture of blood, law, election by nobles, religious anointing and recognition by the people who mattered. The English claim was reasonable in its inheritance logic, and the French one was strong in custom and in local support. Neither side was simply a fraud. The war lasted so long partly because both sets of arguments were credible, and partly because France’s own divisions gave outsiders chances.
An outcome without a verdict
By 1453 the French king controlled almost all of the country, and the English claim had no practical future. Yet English monarchs kept the title king of France for a long time afterward, which tells us how much the dispute had been about status and dynasty as well as land. The broader story of the war is outlined in the overview of the Hundred Years War, while this article has stayed with the crowns and the families behind them.