Edward was not mad. He knew the claim wasn’t real. He made it because he was in dispute with the actual French monarchy about the feudal status of his own vast holdings in the southwest of the country, the duchy of Aquitaine. He needed the support of the Flemings, but they were also feudal subjects of the French monarchy. They couldn’t support him unless he declared that he was in fact king of France. So he did.
This reminds us, though, of one of the great problems of Brexit: saving face. People – and states – don’t act merely out of self-interest. There are times when they make claims they know to be daft. But they can’t find a way to back down.
The claim that the English monarch was king of France started out as a way of dealing with an immediate political problem, just as Brexit has its origins in David Cameron’s strategy for dealing with internal dissent in the Tory party. It, too, was thought of as a kind of deliberate overreach: Edward, like the less extreme of the Brexiters, thought he was making an exaggerated gesture that could be easily bargained away in later negotiations. [...]
It is astonishing how much pain people will suffer and inflict rather than admit they made a mistake. Brexit is not the Hundred Years War, but unless someone finds a way out it now, the consequences will be felt for a century.
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