Arthur I, Duke of Brittany and His Claim on the English Throne

The death of king Richard The Lion Heart in 1199 caused considerable troubles to the Angevin empire, when there again raised for english medieval history very pressing question - who is legitimate successor to the throne? There were two possible pretendents, both had comparable claim to the crown. First of them was Richard's brother John, the second his nephew, at this time twelve years old duke of Brittany Arthur. Legal customs of this period theoretically admitted the succession of both men, because there were no unified successorial usage and every single part of the Angevin empire looked on this problem differently. While John was generally accepted without problems in Normandy and then he was crowned king of England, the toughest fight blazed out in Anjou, Maine and Touraine, where support was given to Arthur. He had also support of king of France Philip Augustus, who understood well, that Arthur is an ideal tool for his schemes to elimination and mastery over the Angevin empire. Whole long struggle between the nephew and his uncle was finsihed by Arthur's capture in the summer of 1202 and his subsequent death in 1203. However king John was not able to stop the dissolution of Plantagenet empire, which was reduced to the duchy of Aquitaine at the beginning of 13th century