The old Breton kingdom had now sunk into a duchy which was constantly a prey to civil war. The ruling house of the counts of Nantes were at perpetual strife with their rivals of Rennes. Alan Barbetorte, count of Nantes, had been compelled to flee the country and take shelter in England, at the general refuge of all exiles, the court of Æthelstan, till a treaty between Æthelstan’s successor Eadmund and Louis From-over-sea restored him to the dukedom of Britanny for the rest of his life. He died in 952, leaving his duchy and his infant son Drogo to the care of his wife’s brother, Theobald, count of Blois and Chartres, a wily, unscrupulous politician known by the well-deserved epithet of “the Trickster,” who at once resolved to turn his brother-in-law’s dying charge to account for purposes of his own. But between his own territories and the Breton duchy lay the Angevin march; his first step therefore must be to make a friend of its ruler. For this end a very simple means presented itself. Fulk’s wife had left him a widower with one son;[258] Theobald offered him the hand of his sister, the widow of Alan, and with it half the city and county of Nantes, to have and to hold during Drogo’s minority; while he gave the other half to the rival claimant of the duchy, Juhel Berenger of Rennes, under promise of obedience to himself as overlord.[259] Unhappily, the re-marriage of Alan’s widow was soon followed by the death of her child. In later days Breton suspicion laid the blame upon his step-father; but the story has come down to us in a shape so extremely improbable that it can leave no stain on the memory of the Good Count.[260] Two sons of Alan, both much older than Drogo, still remained. But they were not sons of Drogo’s mother; Fulk therefore might justly think himself entitled to dispute their claims to the succession, and hold that, in default of lawful heirs, the heritage of Duke Alan should pass, as the dowry of the widow, to her second husband--a practice very common in that age. And Fulk would naturally feel his case strengthened by the fact that part at least of the debateable land--that is, nearly half the territory between the Mayenne and Nantes itself--had once been Angevin ground. [258] Her name was Gerberga, as appears by a charter of her son, Geoffrey Greygown, quoted in _Art de vérifier les Dates_, vol. xiii. p. 47. [259] Chron. Brioc. in Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i. cols. 29, 30. Chron. Namnet., _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. viii. p. 277.