It was an impulse natural to feudal magnates to try and achieve as much political and legal independence as they could exact from their royal overlords. The eventual triumph of centralizing monarchies would make such centrifugal proclivities appear as retrograde movements against the flow of history – provincial obscurantism and feudal greed impeding for a time the formation of the indivisible national state. However, the resurgence in the twentieth century of many regional particularismes hitherto believed extinct, suggest that the wish to be master in one's own house was by no means the monopoly of medieval nobles, and that their resistance to royal hegemony could sometimes reflect their subjects' desires for a measure of self-governance and a distinct cultural identity. It remains to be seen whether we can read in Gaston III's external relations the grand design that has sometimes been suggested. But it is safe to say that his policy did not greatly differ from those of other territorial seigneurs, and that his aims were not at variance with the needs and aspirations of at least his Béarnais subjects.

The ransoms from his victory at Launac had made the Count of Foix one of the richest – if not the richest – lord between Gascony and Languedoc. Should he want to do so, his new found wealth of ready cash could now afford him the means, military and political, to tip the balance between the greater contending powers of the region.