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Armorial of the House of Plantagenet

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ2862513 ↗
Source-derived summary

The House of Plantagenet was the first truly armigerous royal dynasty of England. Their predecessor, Henry I of England, had presented items decorated with a lion heraldic emblem to his son-in-law, Plantagenet founder Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, and his family experimented with different lion-bearing coats until these coalesced during the reign of his grandson, Richard I (1189–1199), into a coat of arms with three lions on a red field, formally Gules, three lions passant guardant or (armed and langued azure), that became the Royal Arms of England, and colloquially those of England itself. The various cadet branches descended from this family bore differenced versions of these arms, while later members of the House of Plantagenet would either quarter or impale these arms with others to reflect their political aspirations.

Overview of Plantagenet arms

Before Edward III

After Edward III

House of Lancaster

House of York

Non-Plantagenet families

The heiresses of Norfolk and Kent transmitted the Plantagenet arms to non-Plantagenet families:

Henry VI of England granted differenced versions of the Plantagenet arms to his maternal half-brothers. This was an extraordinary grant, since they were not descended from the English royal family.

House of Plantagenet

Descendants of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou

Descendants of John, King of England

Descendants of Henry III of England

Descendants of Edward I of England

Descendants of Edward II of England

Descendants of Edward III of England

Descendants of Edward, the Black Prince

Descendants of Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence

John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster

Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York

Descendants of Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester

House of Lancaster

Descendants of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster

Descendants of Henry IV of England

Descendants of Henry V of England

House of York

Descendants of Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York

Descendants of Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York

Descendants of Edward IV of England

Descendants of George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence

Descendants of Richard III of England

House of Beaufort

Descendants of John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset

Descendants of Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset

See also

Royal arms of England

House of Plantagenet

Issue of Edward III of England

House of Lancaster

House of York

House of Beaufort

War of the Roses

References

Citations

Bibliography

Ailes, Adrian (1982), The Origins of The Royal Arms of England, Reading: Graduate Center for Medieval Studies, University of Reading, ISBN 0704907763

Baynes, T. S.; Smith, W. R., eds. (1880), "Heraldry", Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 11 (9th ed.), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 689

Brooke-Little, J.P., FSA (1978) [1950], Boutell's Heraldry (Revised ed.), London: Frederick Warne LTD, ISBN 0-7232-2096-4{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Burke, John (1914), Burke's genealogical and heraldic history of peerage, baronetage and knightage, New York: G.P.Putnam's Sons, p. 207.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Armorial of the House of Plantagenet” as wikimedia list article. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1189, 1199, 1982, 1880—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Armorial, House and Plantagenet can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as wikimedia list article. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2862513. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1189, 1199, 1982 and 1880.

Critical limits

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This entry incorporates text from “Armorial of the House of Plantagenet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.