County of Anjou

The County of Anjou was the west French county that fathered the Plantagenet Empire, ruled from Angers from 930 to its ducal promotion in 1360. Born of the Andes state and Rome's Andecavi civitas, kept as Frankish pagus and countship, it sat walled by Brittany, Maine, Touraine and Poitou, roughly the Angers diocese. Ingelger held it as viscount around 870, Fulk the Red from 888, Fulk the Good of the wise-ass proverb from 938, Geoffrey Greytunic from 958. Its twelfth-century Count Geoffrey built the nucleus of the Angevin world, his son Henry joined Anjou to Normandy and England, and Fulk's line carried Maine and Touraine with it, the adjectival Angevin spreading with the dynasty. Richard's death undid it all: Philip Augustus seized Anjou with Maine and Touraine in 1204, raised the county to a duchy in 1360, and the crown absorbed it in 1482, keeping Anjou as a province to 1790.