[4] Philip was influenced by the troubles and unrest that his father had encountered during 1314, as well as by the difficulties his older brother, Louis X, known as "the Quarreler", had faced during the intervening few years.

[7] Modern scholars have found little evidence as to whether the marriage was a happy one, but the pair had a considerable number of children in a short space of time,[8] and Philip was exceptionally generous to Joan by the standards of the day.

[7] Philip went to great lengths not only to endow Joan with lands and money but to try to ensure that these gifts were irrevocable in the event of his early death.

Joan, the remaining daughter of Louis X by Margaret of Burgundy, was one obvious candidate, but suspicion still hung over her as a result of the scandal in 1314, including concerns over her actual parentage.

[6] With only his niece between himself and the throne, Philip engaged in some rapid political negotiations and convinced Charles of Valois, who along with Odo IV was championing Joan's rights, to switch sides and support him instead.

[6] Philip laid down the principle that Joan, as a woman, could not inherit the throne of France, played heavily upon the fact that he was now the anointed king, and consolidated what some authors have described as his effective "usurpation" of power.

Philip then built his reign around the notion of reform – "reclaiming rights, revenues and territories" that had been wrongly lost to the crown in recent years.

[4] Domestically, Philip proved a "strong and popular" king,[6] despite inheriting an uncertain situation and an ongoing sequence of poor harvests.

[4] He followed in the steps of his father, Philip IV, in trying to place the French crown on a solid fiscal footing and revoked many of the unpopular decisions of his predecessor and older brother, Louis X.

[18] In 1317, Philip reissued an act first passed by his father, in 1311, condemning the alienation and theft of royal resources and offices in the provinces.

In practice, Philip did not entirely keep to his self-declared principles on grants of royal lands and titles, but he was far more conservative in such matters than his immediate predecessors.

Louis X had prohibited exports of grain and other material to Flanders in 1315, resulting in a profitable smuggling industry that in turn discouraged legal trade with the French crown along the border region; Louis was forced to directly requisition food for his forces, resulting in a string of complaints from local lords and the Church.

[28] Edward gave homage but refused to swear fealty; nonetheless, this marked a period of increased French pressure on England over Gascony.

[31] An attempt to send a naval vanguard from the south of France under Louis I of Clermont failed, however, with the forces being destroyed in a battle off Genoa in 1319.

[32] Over the winter of 1319–20 Philip convened a number of meetings with French military leaders in preparation for a potential second expedition,[30] that in turn informed Bishop William Durand's famous treatise on crusading.

[33] By the end of Philip's reign, however, he and John had fallen out over the issue of new monies and commitments to how they were spent, and the attentions of both were focused on managing the challenge of the Shepherds' Crusade.

[34] Philip's intent for a new crusade had certainly become widely known by the spring of 1320, and the emerging peace in Flanders and the north of France had left a large number of displaced peasants and soldiers.

[24] The result was a large and violent anti-Semitic movement threatening local Jews, royal castles,[35] the wealthier clergy,[36] and Paris itself.

The accusation, apparently unfounded, was that lepers had been poisoning the wells of various towns, and that this activity had been orchestrated by the Jewish minority, secretly commissioned by foreign Muslims.

[39] Following the events of 1320, Philip was involved in fining those who had attacked Jews during the Shepherds' Crusade, which in practice added further to the dislike of this minority in France.

[41] Philip was in Poitiers in June, involved in a tour of the south aimed at reform of the southern fiscal system, when word arrived of the scare.

[44] Some Jews did leave France as a result of the leper scare, but Philip had successfully resisted signing any formal edict, which limited the impact to some degree.

Charles was also to die without male issue, resulting ultimately in the claim to the French throne by Edward III of England and the subsequent Hundred Years War (1337–1453).