The Angevin Empire never called itself an empire; a Victorian historian named it
In the 12th century one family controlled England, roughly half of modern France and pieces of Wales and Ireland, yet held court mainly in Anjou, not London. Nobody at the time called it the Angevin Empire. That label came from Kate Norgate in 1887, and historians still argue over whether empire is the right word.
Henry II built it through inheritance and marriage. From his father Geoffrey he took Normandy and Anjou, the county that gives the word Angevin. Marrying Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152 added her vast duchy, and in 1154 he claimed the English crown through his mother, Empress Matilda, succeeding his rival Stephen. England supplied his grandest title, but the Plantagenets spent their time at Angers in Anjou and Chinon in Touraine. His sons Richard I and John followed, while another son, Geoffrey, founded a separate line in Brittany.
Contemporary documents used clumsy phrases along the lines of our kingdom and all lands under our rule. Norgate's term, from her book England under the Angevin Kings, stuck in English; French writers sometimes prefer espace Plantagenêt. Critics note that the French territories legally belonged to the Kingdom of France, and Henry governed them under local titles such as duke rather than as king. There is no sign the lands shared a common identity, and the Plantagenets never claimed an imperial title, although chroniclers serving Henry sometimes used the word. Some scholars reserve empire for the Holy Roman Empire; W. L. Warren preferred commonwealth, describing seven sovereign states linked only by one ruler.
The arrangement also tied the Plantagenets in knots with the Capetian kings of France, to whom they owed feudal homage for their continental lands while rivalling them in power. It could look like a vassal outshining his lord. That rivalry came to a head under John, who lost the Anglo-French War of 1213 to 1214 after the Battle of Bouvines against Philip II. He kept only Guyenne and Gascony in southern Aquitaine.
Bouvines did not end the contest. It prepared the ground for the Hundred Years' War of 1337 to 1453, during which the Plantagenets regained much of western, central and northern France, only to lose it for good. Historians now sometimes describe the whole structure as an early composite monarchy, a patchwork held together by a person rather than a state.
Source: Angevin Empire
