Anjou
Anjou. District around the city of Angers in France ruled by counts from the 10th cent. onwards. The counts of Anjou won control of neighbouring regions (Maine and Touraine) and played a crucial role in the politics of northern France. This led, in 1127, to Henry I marrying his daughter Matilda to the young count, Geoffrey ‘le Bel’—otherwise known as Geoffrey Plantagenet, allegedly because of his habit of wearing a sprig of broom (planta genista) in his cap. After Henry I's death, Geoffrey of Anjou conquered Normandy and bequeathed it, together with Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, to his elder son Henry in 1151. In 1154 Henry of Anjou became King Henry II of England and for the next fifty years Anjou remained the homeland of three successive kings of England: Henry II, Richard I, and John. Since Henry had married Eleanor, duchess of Aquitaine, in 1152, this meant that a count of Anjou had become ruler of huge dominions stretching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees: the Angevin empire. Henry II, Eleanor, and Richard were all buried in Fontevraud (in Anjou), but in 1203–5 John's incompetence allowed Philip Augustus of France to wrest Anjou as well as Normandy from the family's grasp. In 1259, by the treaty of Paris, Henry III reluctantly acknowledged that Anjou belonged to the king of France. Later, at the highpoint of their success in the Hundred Years War, the English briefly won control of Maine.
John Gillingham
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Anjou