Philip IV the Fair becomes King of France

1285

On the death of his father Philip III, the seventeen-year-old prince inherited the French throne. Reserved and enigmatic, he would pick fights with popes, English kings, and Knights Templar, and reshape the French state through a generation of clever lawyers. His chief advisors, the legists Nogaret and Flotte, transformed the French monarchy into a bureaucratic machine whose reach extended into every corner of the kingdom.