SD: countrystudy

The Plantagenets
1154 - 1399

The Plantagenets were a huge powerful family not just in England but throughout Europe. The first Plantagenet was King Henry 2nd whose father owned vast lands in Anjou an area as big as Normandy around the modern town of Tours. Henry’s wife Eleanor ruled the even larger territory to the south called Aquitaine. Plantagenet Kings were thus the richest family in Europe and ruled England and half of France.

Their name came from planta genista, the Latin for yellow broom flower, which the Counts of Anjou wore as an emblem on their helmets.

This dynasty is normally subdivided into three parts.

1154-1216 - The first Plantagenet kings were the Angevins
1216-1399 - The Plantagenets
1399-1485 - The Houses of Lancaster and of York.
Normally separated from main stream Plantagenets because they
considered the first truly English rather than French Kings.

Altogether the House of Plantagents ruled for 331 years (includes The Houses of Lancaster and of York).

Angevins