The Constable of France was lieutenant to the King of France, the first of the original five Great Officers of the Crown and the commander-in-chief of the Royal Army. He was, at least on paper, the highest-ranking member of the French nobility.

Philip I, called the Amorous, was King of the Franks from 1060 to 1108. His reign, like that of most of the early Capetians, was extraordinarily long for the time. The monarchy began a modest recovery from the low it had reached during the reign of his father, Henry I, and he added the Vexin region and the viscountcy of Bourges to his royal domaine.