County of Blois

The County of Blois was the Loire valley power from 500 to 1391, the counts who nearly became kings of everything. Born when Clovis's Franks divided Gaul, Blois grew fat on Loire tolls and built its castle over the river; the Theobaldian counts married heiresses the way other men married wives, and about 1125 Theobald II joined Blois to Champagne, ruling the fairs of Troyes and Provins where Europe's money changed hands. Stephen, a younger son sent to England with a sword and a smile, took the crown itself in 1135 and held it through nineteen years of anarchy against his cousin Matilda. The house reached for more: Charles of Blois fought the Breton succession war for twenty three years and died canonized in battle in 1364. Bankrupt by chivalry, the last count sold Blois to Louis of Orléans in 1391; the county dissolved into the royal domain, its castle kept by kings who preferred Chambord, and its counts survived only in the English history books their ancestor had written with a usurper's crown.