What were the regions of medieval France like? Were they like their own states?

Until the new monarchs started to hold their own armies the duchies sent their own personal armies to war and hence fought for their regional provinces not for France

Monarchs didn't have their own armies at one point?

If france lost the HYW they'd basically be a government in exile in occitania. But beyond that not really, multilingual states existed relatively easily because the pedants never left their land and the nobles were multilingual

They had.

But so did individual princes.

I'm hurrying somewhere so this'll be brief, but hopefully there'll be someone to detail it more:

>before
>France is ridden with dukes, lords, counts, marquis and the lot who hold the land to themselves, and very loosely obey to the king of France, for whom his word is law only in the royal domain

>after
>an estimated 2/3rds of the french nobility is surmised to have perished in acts of vaingloriousness, letting Charles VII monopolize their former lands under his royal domain, which lets him instill into the peasants' minds that they are french, and not simply Aquitain, or Picard, or Provençal, etc...

I know I'm making hazy but it technically should make sense.

My picture is from somewhat later, but mire all you want the size of that freaking Capetian land!

Not for a long time. Before 1500 or so a kingdom consisted of a king who nominally possessed all the land of his kingdom and lent it to provincial leaders (dukes, barons, princes, bishops, etc) who in turn gave him tax money and loyalty by lending him their armies. Their armies consisted of a lot of Knights who the local lords gave land to. Because of this, medieval politics was mostly push and pull between lordships and the king

Thanks user. Very helpful.

Compare it to this earlier map to see the change fully. Look at how small the royal domains are.

Ah, don't thank me! That was pretty pitiful and sloppy, but I really couldn't let Veeky Forums steal away more of my time than it should...

An interest in my country is always appreciated. And hopefully with this you'll not be this puzzled when people on here assert that the Hundred Years' War was the birth of France and England.

Wasn't the house of burgundy a branch of the house of capet

House of Burgundy was a cadet branch of House of Valois. The whole thing was a shitshow actually.

It was a long process too, the 100 years war isn't the only significant event. Philippe Auguste is extremely important as well.

Here is one from even earlier, with an even smaller royal domaine.

Kind of an off topic question: I heard the knights templar were trying to make a state for themselves somewhere in southern France. Is that true or I am being memed by conspiracyfags?

That sounds like you are being fooled.

Nah I'm pretty sure they just had a few scattered castles. Philippe IV plundered them for their money, not because they were a real threat. They were pretty weak by then anyway

Like he says, they were certainly financially powerful, which lead to them being preyed on both by the pope and the french King, but their political power was then dwindling, although they could've reformed themselves and set their sights on a monastic state:

>The organization's Templar Houses, hundreds of which were dotted throughout Europe and the Near East, gave them a widespread presence at the local level.[3] The Templars still managed many businesses, and many Europeans had daily contact with the Templar network, such as by working at a Templar farm or vineyard, or using the order as a bank in which to store personal valuables. The order was still not subject to local government, making it everywhere a "state within a state"—its standing army, though it no longer had a well-defined mission, could pass freely through all borders. This situation heightened tensions with some European nobility, especially as the Templars were indicating an interest in founding their own monastic state, just as the Teutonic Knights had done in Prussia[19] and the Knights Hospitaller were doing in Rhodes.[27]

Albigensian crusade has the side effect of ending the substantial autonomy enjoyed by Occitanian lords since majority of the crusaders are from Northern France (i.e. Simon de Montfort)

my french history is weak, but not really

there is a triangle between the netherlands, london, and paris within which 90% of preindustrial technology was developed. centralization was the result from power differentials allowed by bureaucracies within this triangle, but because of power balances, france could only expand southward, unable to conquer britain or the netherlands, england could only expand northwestward, and the netherlands was forced to expand by sea.

so such technological forces existed in the south, so they were more or less doomed tos lowly become vassals independent of local dynamics, because local dynamics are always subordinate to technological ones