Europe · High and late Middle Ages
House of Valois-Anjou
from 1360
Founded when Louis I, Duke of Anjou (1339–1384), second son of King John II of France, received Anjou (raised to a duchy, 1360). Adopted as heir by the childless Queen Joanna I of Naples, Louis and his descendants pressed a claim to Naples (against the Durazzo line) for generations, largely fruitlessly.
- Existed
- from 1360
- Shown on the map
- 1363–1486
- Peak area
- 64k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
Founded when Louis I, Duke of Anjou (1339–1384), second son of King John II of France, received Anjou (raised to a duchy, 1360). Adopted as heir by the childless Queen Joanna I of Naples, Louis and his descendants pressed a claim to Naples (against the Durazzo line) for generations, largely fruitlessly. The most memorable was René of Anjou ("Good King René," 1409–1480) — titular King of Naples, Duke of Anjou, Bar and Lorraine (by marriage), and Count of Provence — a cultivated poet and patron whose real power lay in Provence and whose Neapolitan kingdom was lost to Aragon (1442). On the deaths of René and his nephew Charles (1481), Anjou, Maine and Provence were annexed to the French crown, and the Angevin claim to Naples passed to the kings of France, providing the pretext for the Italian Wars from 1494.
Common questions
- What was the House of Valois-Anjou?
- Founded when Louis I, Duke of Anjou (1339–1384), second son of King John II of France, received Anjou (raised to a duchy, 1360). Adopted as heir by the childless Queen Joanna I of Naples, Louis and his descendants pressed a claim to Naples (against the Durazzo line) for generations, largely fruitlessly.
- When did the House of Valois-Anjou exist?
- The House of Valois-Anjou existed from 1360. On this map it is drawn 1363–1486.
- How large was the House of Valois-Anjou?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the House of Valois-Anjou covered about 64,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each territory as the primary basis, cross-checked against Encyclopædia Britannica and specialist snippets, and flags entries built on unreliable foundations — the 911 treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte known only from Dudo of Saint-Quentin, and Arnaud Amalric's alleged order at Béziers attested only decades after the fact. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — House of Valois-Anjou en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Valois-Anjou
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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