The Capetians

The Robertians, a family of the Frankish nobility, take their name from the first name Robert, repeated from generation to generation. Former servants of the Merovingians in Neustria, then loyal to the early Carolingians, they amass counties and abbeys. Their strength, more than intermittent crowns, comes from their ability to renounce the throne to consolidate real power. Three of them will be kings: Odo in 888, Robert I in 922, and Hugh Capet in 987.

In 987, on the death of the last Carolingian Louis V, the magnates of the realm elect Hugh Capet, Duke of the Franks, as king. He has himself called « rex Francorum », king of the Franks rather than king of a territory. The byname « Capet » — from the Latin cappa, « cope » — appears only later, perhaps alluding to the abbatial cope, Hugh and his father being lay abbots of many abbeys. Hugh at once associates his son Robert with the throne, founding the hereditary principle that will ensure the dynasty’s continuity.

For more than three centuries (987–1328), the direct Capetians reign without interruption, each passing the crown to his son. Robert the Pious, Henry I, Philip I, Louis VI « the Fat » slowly consolidate the royal domain around the Île-de-France. With Philip II Augustus (1180–1223), the king defeats the Plantagenets, reconquers Normandy (1204), and makes France the great power of the West. He has himself called « king of France » and no longer merely « of the Franks ».

Louis IX, « Saint Louis » (1226–1270), embodies the ideal Christian king: dispensing justice under the oak of Vincennes, crusader, canonized in 1297. His grandson Philip IV « the Fair » (1285–1314) turns the monarchy into a modern state: jurists, taxation, struggle against the papacy (the outrage of Anagni), and suppression of the Templars (1307). On his death, his three sons reign and die without a male heir: in 1328 the direct line dies out.

With the direct line extinct in 1328, the crown passes to the Valois, a Capetian branch descended from Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the Fair. From this branch is born René « the Good King René » of Anjou, whose descent is told elsewhere (see: René of Anjou). Another branch, through the counts of Flanders and the dukes of Burgundy, leads to the antipope Felix V of Savoy and the Doria-Sforza, also present in the papal descents (see: The Popes). Here we follow instead the path which, through the Évreux and the kings of Navarre, leads to the family.

The path leading to Léon passes through Philip III « the Bold » and his second son Louis, count of Évreux. From his descendants, through Philip « the Good » of Évreux king of Navarre and the counts of Beaumont, one reaches Catherine of Beaumont, who in 1436 marries Juan II Fernández de Híjar. Through the dukes of Híjar the line reaches the Pignatelli, then — by the marriage of 1796 — the Gallone, princes of Tricase, and finally Léon.