The Kingdom of France in the Middle Ages (roughly, from the 10th century to the middle of the 15th century) was marked by the fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire and West Francia (843–987) the expansion of royal control by the House of Capet (987–1328), including their struggles with the virtually independent principalities (duchies and counties, such as the Norman and Angevin regions), and the creation and extension of administrative/state control (notably under Philip II Augustus and Louis IX) in the 13th century and the rise of the House of Valois (1328–1589), including the protracted dynastic crisis against the House of Plantagenet and their Angevin Empire, culminating in the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) (compounded by the catastrophic Black Death in 1348), which laid the seeds for a more centralized and expanded state in the early modern period and the creation of a sense of French identity.
