Foix

The counts of Foix took their name from the castle of Foix in the northern Pyrenees, held by Roger of Foix in the mid-eleventh century. Roger II joined the First Crusade in 1095, a later count taking the Cathar side in the Albigensian Crusade.

From 1278 the counts were also co-princes of Andorra. In 1290 Roger Bernard III inherited Bearn through his Bearn heiress wife, making them great nobles of southern France and opening a long feud with the Armagnacs.

In 1337 Gaston II ruled from Bearn. His son Gaston III, called Phoebus, was the family's most famous member: he defeated the Armagnacs in 1362 and wrote the hunting treatise Livre de chasse. On his death without legitimate sons in 1391 the county passed to a cadet branch, whose Francis Phoebus became king of Navarre in 1479. His sister Catherine carried the inheritance to the Albret family, then to Henry of Navarre, who as Henry IV of France united Foix to the royal domain in 1607.