Angevin Empire - Cultural Influence

Cultural Influence

The hypothetical continuation and expansion of the Angevin Empire over several centuries has been the subject of several tales of alternate history. Historically both English and French historians had viewed the juxtaposition of England and French lands under Angevin control as something of an aberration and an offence to national identity. To English historians the lands in France were an encumbrance, while French historians considered the union to be an English empire.

This is what Whig historian Macaulay, in 1849, wrote in his History of England about the union of the two lands.

Had the Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely, succeeded in uniting all France under their government, it is probable that England would never have had an independent existence. Her princes, her lords, her prelates, would have been men differing in race and language from the artisans and the tillers of the earth. The revenues of her great proprietors would have been spent in festivities and diversions on the banks of the Seine. The noble language of Milton and Burke would have remained a rustic dialect, without a literature, a fixed grammar, or a fixed orthography, and would have been contemptuously abandoned to the use of boors. No man of English extraction would have risen to eminence, except by becoming in speech and habits a Frenchman…

The Plantagenet kings adopted wine as their main drink, replacing the beer and cider used by the Norman kings. The ruling class of the Angevin Empire was also French speaking.

The 12th century is also the century of the Gothic architecture, first known as "Opus Francigenum", from the work of the Abbot Suger at Saint Denis in 1140. The Early English Period began around 1180 or 1190, in the times of the Angevin Empire, but this religious architecture was totally independent of the Angevin Empire, it was just born at the same moment and spread at those times in England. The strongest influence on architecture directly associated with the Plantagenets is about kitchens.

Richard I's personal arms of three golden lions passant guardant on a red field appear in most subsequent English royal heraldry, and in variations on the flags of both Normandy and Aquitaine.

From a political point of view the continental issues were given more attention from the monarchs of England than the British ones already under the Normans. Under Angevin lordship things became even more clear as the balance of power was dramatically set in France and the Angevin kings often spent more times in France than England. With the loss of Normandy and Anjou the fiefdom was cut in two and then the descendants of the Plantagenets can be regarded as English kings accounting Gascony in their domain. This is accordant with the newfound Lordship of Aquitaine being conferred upon the Black Prince of Wales, passing thence to the House of Lancaster, which had pretensions to the Crown of Castile, much as Edward III had to France. It was this assertion of power from England onto France and from Aquitaine onto Castile which marked the difference from earlier in the Angevin period.