settings

The Pillars of the Earth vocabulary

10 places mentioned

< select a category

ALL

geography

This page requires javascript.

help & settings

[x]

display help icons

show definition by default

show uses by default

Anjou: tags: [geography]

► definition

Definition:

a historical province of France straddling the lower Loire River. Its capital was Angers and it was roughly coextensive with the diocese of Angers. [...] The adjectival form of Anjou is Angevin, and inhabitants of Anjou are known as Angevins. During the Middle Ages, the County of Anjou, ruled by the Counts of Anjou, was a prominent fief of the French crown.
[...]
From the outset, Geoffrey Plantagenet tried to profit by his marriage and, after the death of his father-in-law Henry I (1 December 1135), laid the foundation of the conquest of Normandy by a series of campaigns: about the end of 1135 or the beginning of 1136, he entered that country and rejoined his wife, the Empress Matilda, who had received the submission of Argentan, Domfront and Exmes. Having been abruptly recalled into Anjou by a revolt of his barons, he returned to the charge in September 1136 with a strong army, including in its ranks William, duke of Aquitaine, Geoffrey, count of Vendome [fr], and William Talvas, count of Ponthieu. After a few successes he was wounded in the foot at the Siege of Le Sap (1 October) and had to fall back.
[...]

^{text from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike}
^{https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/}

^{map overlay: By ajvocab.com}
^{Anjou map: by Romain Bréget - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8260918}
^{map of France: by OpenStreetMap®, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license}
^{https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/}
^{https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=France#map=6/46.498/2.186}

► uses

Uses:

"Maud is married to Geoffrey of Anjou. Anjou and Normandy have been rivals for generations. Our Norman overlords hate the Angevins. Frankly, it was very optimistic of the old king to expect that a crowd of Anglo-Norman barons would hand over England and Normandy to an Angevin, oath or no oath."

Ken Follett. The Pillars of the Earth, p.106 (1990)

---

those simple names Anjou, Poitou, the Périgord, filled her conversation with pictorial landscapes.

Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volume 5]

---

Reig.

Since thou dost deign to woo her little worth

To be the princely bride of such a lord,

Upon condition I may quietly

Enjoy mine own, the country Maine and Anjou,

Free from oppression or the stroke of war,

My daughter shall be Henry’s, if he please.