Scott Alexander (author/host)

Probably most of it didn't happen, but some of it might have.

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This produced a succession crisis.

The two available candidates to succeed him were the Duke of Goyenne, son of Philip the Fair's daughter Isabella, and the Count of Orléans, son of Philip the Fair's brother Charles of Valois.

Footnote, after Philip the Fair's daughter Isabella, the She-Wolf of France.

Man, these people have great nicknames.

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Since the Duke of Guyenne was Edward III, King of England, and the Count of Orléans wasn't, the choice was obvious, and France declared that the law had always been that the throne could never pass through a woman.

Edward III was 16, in England, and busy, so he raised no meaningful objection, and Philip of Valois, called the fortunate because he got to be king, inherited.

Twelve years later, Philip eyed Guyane, the last bit of France left in English hands, from Eleanor of Aquitaine's inheritance, and observing the English busy in Scotland, he made his move.

This was unwise.

It had been a reasonable decision to attack Edward II, inept, oppressive and so devoted to his favourites, his lords had plotted his murder.

Edward III took after his grandfathers on both sides, conquerors both, and what he'd been busy with during his French grandfather's death was plotting a coup against his regents.

At age 17 he imprisoned his mother, murdered her lover and invaded Scotland.

Footnote.

The two of them had arranged the overthrow and murder of his father.

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After a decade or so, the Scots Wars pulled the French in.

The old alliance was not so old back then, but it existed, and since the French wanted to get Guyen back, why not?

The answer was, as it happened, that the Edwards I and III had spent the past 60 years building the most professional army in Europe.