Dauphiné

The Dauphiné, Dauphiny to the English, Occitan Daufinat, Arpitan Dôfenât, was the southeast French province of the Ancien régime, of Isère, Drôme and Hautes-Alpes, in the green snowy high Alps, in the green Alpine valleys, with Grenoble first among Vienne, Valence, Gap and Romans, its people Dauphinois, named for the dolphin its counts bore. Guigues of Albon took the sea-beast for arms and the nickname Dauphin, his line turned Counts of Albon into Dauphins of Viennois, and the land became an Empire state in the eleventh century with liberties and tax freedom other provinces envied. In 1349 the last private Dauphin, drowned in debt and heirless, sold the whole to the future Charles V of France, on terms that the French eldest heir should ever after be called Dauphin. Autonomy mostly lapsed by 1457, provincehood lasted to the Revolution, and the dolphin still swims in Grenoble's arms.