English claims to the French throne

From 1340, English monarchs, beginning with the Plantagenet king Edward III, asserted that they were the rightful kings of France. They fought the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), in part, to enforce this claim, but ultimately without success. From the early 16th century, the claim had lost any realistic prospect of fulfilment, although every English and, later, British monarch, from Edward to George III, styled themselves king or queen of France until 1801.

Edward's claim was through his mother, Isabella, sister of the last direct line Capetian king of France, Charles IV. Women were excluded from inheriting the French crown and Edward was Charles's nearest male relative. On Charles's death in 1328, however, the French magnates supported Philip VI, the first king of the House of Valois, a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty. Philip was Charles's nearest male line relative. French jurists later argued that it was a fundamental law of the kingdom that the crown could not be inherited through the female line. This was supposedly based on the 6th-century Frankish legal code known as the Salic law, although the link to the Salic law, which was tenuous in any case, was not made until the 15th century.

Edward spent much of his reign at war with the Valois kings but never secured the crown, although his main concern was to protect his French fief of Gascony. His great-grandson, Henry V, following his crushing victory at Agincourt, was able to impose the Treaty of Troyes on the French in 1420. This stipulated that he and his heirs would succeed the Valois king Charles VI on his death. Both kings died in 1422 and Henry's son, Henry VI, was crowned king of both countries, creating the so-called "dual monarchy". However, he was only recognised as king in northern France. French resistance to the dual monarchy resulted in the English being expelled from France by 1453, ending the Hundred Years' War, but leaving Calais as the last remaining English possession.

Later English invasions to win the French throne failed, the last being by Henry VIII in 1523. Calais was lost in 1558. England and France continued to fight wars but none was over the claim to the crown. The use of the title by English and, later, by British monarchs also continued but was ignored by the French, as the claim ceased to have any practical significance. However, following the French Revolution, the new republican government of France objected to the practice and the title was no longer used from 1801. The claim was finally abandoned the following year.