Capet

The direct House of Capet ruled France from Paris. Its founder Hugh Capet, an Ile-de-France lord, was elected king in 987 after the last Carolingian died, and made the crown hereditary by crowning his son in his lifetime. Early kings held little beyond Ile-de-France, but Philip II Augustus, from 1180, broke the Plantagenet grip on western France, triumphed at Bouvines in 1214 and enlarged the royal domain.

Louis IX, later Saint Louis, built royal justice machinery and died on crusade at Tunis in 1270. Philip IV the Fair quarrelled with the papacy, called the Estates-General in 1302 and suppressed the Knights Templar.

His three sons died without male heirs, and when Charles IV died in 1328 lawyers invoked the Salic law to bar Edward III of England, whose claim came through a woman, giving the crown to Philip VI of Valois and opening the Hundred Years' War. Hugh Capet's blood carried on through cadet branches including Valois, Anjou and Bourbon.