Les châteaux féodaux

There was certainly an Anglo-Norman world of castles (e.g. huge rectangular tower keeps bigger than any found elsewhere). In England (and in Britain) castles were a Norman importation and there was no native tradition. But an Angevin world is a different matter. The Angevin empire was an agglomeration of feudal states and there was a rapid development of castles in all local and feudal worlds before 1154. Perhaps here and there the influence of one part of the Angevin world upon another may be detected. Thus the semi-cylindrical angle buttress of keeps found almost exclusively in Poitou-Vendée may appear on the south-east angle of the great tower at Rochester thanks to the Poitevin friends of the young Henry III. Also the Angevin world, like the other local worlds of feudal Europe, was a world of personal lordship. Castles, especially in their role as lordly residences, are personal buildings. Château-Gaillard, the finest castle of its age, was the castle of Richard I and thus an Angevin castle. There is certainly nothing regional about it.