If only Henry II had included ‘dux Britannie’, or even ‘comes Nannetensis’, in his formal title, Brittany might have received more attention from students of Anglo-Norman and Angevin history. The omission may have been justified, in terms of Henry II's relations with Conan IV and his successors as dukes of Brittany, but it disguises the fact that Brittany was as much a province of the ‘Angevin empire’, one of the continental dominions of the Angevin kings of England, as were Normandy, Greater Anjou and Aquitaine. It has been the subject of this book to examine the means by which Henry II acquired lordship of Brittany, and how the duchy was governed by Henry II and his successors until 1203.

One of the principal themes of the book is that Brittany was not an isolated society prior to the advent of Henry II in 1158. The significance of this for my thesis is that the Angevin regime did not involve the introduction of new and alien institutions to Brittany. Since it is often assumed that this was the case, clearly the historiography of Angevin Brittany requires revision.

The historiography on Brittany at the end of the twelfth century involves a consensus that the significance of the Angevin regime was in the establishment of centralised ducal administration, and the extension of ducal authority over the Breton baronage.