West Francia
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West Francia was the land under the control of Charles the Bald after the Treaty of Verdun of 843, which divided the Carolingian Empire of the Franks into an East, West, and Middle. It is the precursor of modern France. It was also known as Francia Occidentalis and the Kingdom of the West Franks.
It was divided into the following great fiefs: Aquitaine, Brittany, Burgundy, Catalonia, Flanders, Gascony, Gothia (Septimania), the Île-de-France, and Toulouse.
The Carolingians were subsequently to share the fate of their predecessors: after an intermittent power struggle between the two families, the accession (987) of Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris, established on the throne the Capetian dynasty which with its Valois and Bourbon offshoots was to rule France for more than 800 years. After 987, the kingdom came to be known as France, because the new ruling dynasty (the Capetians) were originally dukes of the Île-de-France.
