The Duke of Aquitaine (Occitan: Duc d'Aquitània, French: Duc d'Aquitaine, IPA: [dyk dakitɛn]) ruled the historical region of Aquitaine (not to be confused with modern-day Aquitaine) under the supremacy of Frankish, English and later French kings.
As a successor state for the Visigothic Kingdom (418–721), Aquitania (Aquitaine) and Languedoc (Toulouse) inherited the Visigothic Law and Roman Law which had combined to allow women more rights than their contemporaries would enjoy until the 20th century. Particularly with the Liber Judiciorum as codified 642/643 and expanded on in the Code of Recceswinth in 653, women could inherit land and title and manage it independently from their husbands or male relations, dispose of their property in legal wills if they had no heirs, and women could represent themselves and bear witness in court by age 14 and arrange for their own marriages by age 20.[1] As a consequence, male-preference primogeniture was the practiced succession law for the nobility.
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The Merovingian kings and dukes of Aquitaine had their capital at Toulouse. The Carolingian kings used different capitals situated further north. In 765 Pepin the Short bestowed the captured golden banner of the Aquitainian duke, Waiffre, on the Abbey of Saint Martial in Limoges. Pepin I of Aquitaine was buried in Poitiers. Charles the Child was crowned at Limoges and buried at Bourges. When Aquitaine briefly asserted independence after the death of Charles the Fat, it was Ranulf II of Poitou who took the royal title. In the late tenth century, Louis the Indolent was crowned at Brioude.
The Aquitainian ducal coronation is preserved in a late twelfth-century ordo (formula) from Saint-Étienne in Limoges, based on an earlier Romano-German ordo. In the early thirteenth century a commentary was added to this ordo, which emphasises Limoges as the capital of Aquitaine. The ordo indicates that the duke received a silk mantle, coronet, banner, sword, spurs, and the ring of Saint Valerie.
Merovingian kings are in boldface.
After 778, Charlemagne appointed no more Dukes, assuming direct rule of Aquitaine (and accordingly is enumerated Charles I of Aquitaine, as the first so named King in that kingdom). In 781, he appointed his son Louis as a subordinate King and assigned him with Aquitaine. After Louis, several other members of the dynasty ruled over the region as subordinate kings.
After 877, when Louis the Stammerer succeeded his father Charles the Bald as King of the Franks and similarly in 882, when Carloman succeeded his brother Louis III to become King of (all) Western Francia, Aquitaine remained under the supremacy of the Western Frankish kings with only two instances where the title resurfaced.
The Carolingian kings again appointed Dukes of Aquitaine, first in 852, and again since 866. Later on, this Duchy was also called Guyenne.
From 1152 the Duchy of Aquitaine was held by the Plantagenets, who also ruled England as independent monarchs, as well also holding other territories in France by separate inheritance (see Plantagenet Empire). The Plantagenets were often more powerful than the kings of France, and their reluctance to do homage to the kings of France for their lands in France was one of the major sources of conflict in medieval Western Europe.
Richard Lionheart was outlived by his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine. In 1189 she acted as regent for the Duchy while he was on crusade — a position he resumed on his return to Europe.
In 1337, King Philip VI of France reclaimed the fief of Aquitaine from Edward III, King of England. Edward in turn claimed the title of King of France, by right of his descent from his maternal-grandfather King Philip. This triggered the Hundred Years' War, in which both the Plantagenets and the House of Valois claimed the supremacy over Aquitaine due to the King of France.
In 1360 both sides signed the Treaty of Bretigny, in which Edward renounced the French crown but remained sovereign Lord of Aquitaine (rather than merely Duke). However, when the treaty was broken in 1369, English claims and the war resumed.
In 1362, King Edward III, as Lord of Aquitaine, made his eldest son Edward, Prince of Wales Prince of Aquitaine.
In 1390, King Richard II, son of Edward the Black Prince appointed his uncle John of Gaunt as Duke of Aquitaine. That title passed on to John's descendants.
Henry V continued to rule over Aquitaine as King of England and Lord of Aquitaine. He invaded France and succeeded at the siege of Harfleur 1414 as well as the Battle of Agincourt 1415. He succeeded in obtaining the French crown for his family by the Treaty of Troyes in 1420. Henry V died in 1422, when his son Henry VI inherited the French throne at the age of less than a year; his reign saw the gradual loss of English control of France.
The Valois Kings of France, claiming supremacy over Aquitaine, granted the title of Duke to their heirs, the Dauphins.
With the end of the Hundred Years War, Aquitaine returned to direct rule of the King of France and remained in the possession of the King. Only occasionally was the Duchy or the title of Duke granted to another member of the dynasty.
The Infante Jaime, Duke of Segovia, son of Alfonso XIII of Spain, was one of the Legitimist pretenders to the French throne; as such he created his son Gonzalo, Duke of Aquitaine (1972-2000); Gonzalo had no legitimate children.