The Kingdom of France in the Middle Ages was marked by the fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire and West Francia ; the expansion of royal control by the House of Capet, including their struggles with the virtually independent principalities, and the creation and extension of administrative/state control in the 13th century; and the rise of the House of Valois, including the protracted dynastic crisis against the House of Plantagenet and their Angevin Empire, culminating in the Hundred Years' War, which laid the seeds for a more centralized and expanded state in the early modern period and the creation of a sense of French identity. Wikipedia