Philip II crowned King of France

September 18, 1180

The sickly fifteen-year-old son of Louis VII, crowned at Reims, would grow into the king who doubled Capetian royal territory, took Normandy from John of England, and walked into Paris as the man who had beaten the Plantagenets. Contemporaries would call him Augustus. His forty-three-year reign transformed France from a modest feudal kingdom into the most powerful state in western Europe.