Philip III of France

Philip maintained many of his father's domestic policies. He reinforced royal ordinances against seigneurial warfare and upheld decrees concerning Jews in France, such as the order for them to wear badges. He also banned the construction and repair of synagogues in 1283, aiming to further his piety.

His reign saw significant expansion of the royal domain. Philip inherited vast territorial lands, including the County of Toulouse, which became part of the crown lands in 1271. Through the Treaty of Orléans, he expanded French influence into Navarre, and though he faced a brief rebellion there, he quickly pacified it by 1277.

However, it was the Aragonese Crusade that perhaps most defined his later reign. Urged by his wife, Marie of Brabant, and his uncle, Charles I of Naples, Philip launched an invasion against the Kingdom of Aragon. This papal-sanctioned war, described by one historian as 'perhaps the most unjust, unnecessary and calamitous enterprise ever undertaken by the Capetian monarchy,' began with initial success.

Philip and his sons besieged Girona and took the city in September 1285. But fate, in a cruel echo of his early life, struck again. Dysentery swept through the French camp, debilitating Philip himself. Forced to retreat, his army was routed at the Battle of the Col de Panissars, and the king died from the disease in Perpignan in October 1285, at the age of 40.

His death mirrored that of his father, from the same scourge, but his burial followed a more elaborate custom of the time. His body was separated, with bones sent to the Basilica of Saint-Denis, his heart to Paris, and other parts to Narbonne and Normandy. Philip was succeeded by his son, the future Philip IV, who would later be known by the poet Dante as 'the father of the Pest of France' — a stark, if poetic, footnote to Philip the Bold's complex time on the throne.