The Bretons are an ethnic group located in the region of Brittany in France. They trace much of their heritage to groups of Brythonic speakers who emigrated from southwestern Great Britain in waves from the 3rd to 6th century into the Armorican peninsula, subsequently named Brittany after them.^{[citation needed]}

The main traditional language of Brittany is Breton (Brezhoneg) and is spoken in Western Brittany. Today Breton is spoken by approximately 365,000 people, of whom about 240,000 speak it fluently. Another linguistic minority is present in Brittany, namely speakers of the Gallo language; Gallo is only spoken in Eastern Brittany, where Breton has virtually never been. Breton is closely related to the Brythonic languages Cornish (closely) and Welsh (more distantly) while the Gallo language is a Romance language of the langue d'oil family. Bretons' native language is mainly French nowadays.

Brittany and its people are included as one of the six Celtic nations. Ethnically, along with the Cornish and Welsh, the Bretons are the last vestiges of the ancient British. The actual number of ethnic Bretons in Brittany and France as a whole is difficult to assess as the French government does not make such statistics. The present day population of Brittany based on a January 2007 estimate is 4,365,500.

Edward the Confessor, (Old English: Ēadƿeard se Andettere; French: Édouard le Confesseur; 1003–05 to 4 or 5 January 1066), son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy, was one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England and is usually regarded as the last king of the House of Wessex, ruling from 1042 to 1066.

He has traditionally been seen as unworldly and pious, and his reign as notable for the disintegration of royal power in England and the advance in power of the Godwin family. His biographers, Frank Barlow and Peter Rex, dispute this, picturing him as a successful king, who was energetic, resourceful and sometimes ruthless, but whose reputation has been unfairly tarnished by the Norman conquest shortly after his death. Other historians regard this picture as only partly true, and not at all in the later part of his reign. In the view of Richard Mortimer, the return of the Godwins from exile in 1052 "meant the effective end of his exercise of power". The difference in his level of activity from the earlier part of his reign "implies a withdrawal from affairs".