the glass is always greener
Or, the continual trials and tribulations of King Charles VI of France
Hello, friends!
It’s the day before the US presidential election, so I am ethically obligated to remind all my US readers to get out there and vote! (As if you could possibly have forgotten to vote. I’ve gotten nine texts from Kamala Harris in the time it took me to write this newsletter. My local school board candidates have been robocalling me like I’m Obi-Wan Kenobi and I’m their only hope.)
If you’ve already voted or live somewhere other than this three-headed clown on a unicycle we call the USA, I hope this story will provide some much-needed distraction. It’s a real barn-burner, and it was suggested ages ago by a dear reader whose name I didn’t write down. Dear Reader, if this was you, remind me in the comments and I’ll update the archived post so everyone can thank you for introducing me to:
King Charles VI of France, A Deeply Unfortunate Man Beset by Incidents
(Updated to add: the brilliant reader in question was !!)
My knowledge of French history starts at the French Revolution and barely covers a damn thing that happened before that. So imagine my delight when, in what I’m describing as “a real Warren G. Harding move,” it turns out Charles VI is responsible for most of the out-of-context old-timey Renaissance French history anecdotes I happen to know. I love it when history is efficient with facts.
The baby who would become King Charles VI was born in 1368, the eldest son of the predictably named King Charles V. His father died when Charles VI was 11 years old, resulting in everyone’s favorite political problem: a regency and four untrustworthy uncles!!
If you’re wondering why four uncles are involved in this regency, well, so am I. All of Charles VI’s paternal uncles and one of his maternal uncles were named co-regents. In practice, this meant these four dickheads spent the next eight years squabbling and declaring small wars on each other trying to get sole control of the crown. This seems like a bad tactical move on the part of France. But then, a surprising amount of French history seems to be “this cabal of uncles is up to no good,”1 so maybe this is business as usual.
Anyway, by 1388, Charles VI was 20 years old, and he decided it was time to put a stop to the Battle of the Four Uncles. He became sole king and ruler of France, sent his uncles away from court, and replaced them with a bunch of his father’s most trusted advisors. This group of councilors was known as Les Marmousets, which the internet tells me is French for “a bunch of silly untrustworthy little guys” and not, as I assumed, “a cute small monkey.”
Another story, another instance in which I do not understand the French. Petition to stop naming the American presidential cabinet things like “Camelot” and instead use names like “The Goof Troop Brigade.”
If I Lived in 1300, I Think I Would Be a Great Portentous Leper and It’s a Shame That Career Path Is Not Available to Me Today
Things were off to a strong start for young Charles VI. With his uncles out of the picture and the Goof Troop of advisors in place, respect for the monarchy grew, and soon Charles was going by the name “Charles le Bien-Aimé,” or “Charles the Beloved.”
But in the early 1390s, Charles VI’s mental health took a sharp turn for the worse. The late 14th century is not a great time to get reliable information about psychiatric diagnoses, so it’s tough to say what illness Charles VI might actually have had. Historians throw out the usual laundry list: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, arsenic poisoning, porphyria, etc. Whatever the case, the new king’s behavior swung erratic.
The first mental health incident for Charles VI was in 1391, when his friend Olivier de Clisson was targeted in an assassination attempt. Two things you need to know about Olivier de Clisson, who does not come up in this story again:
He has the incredible nicknames of “The Butcher” and “The One-Eyed Man of Auray,” making me imagine him as a WWE wrestler rather than a courtier.
This was actually the second time someone had tried to assassinate de Clisson; the first attempt involved putting him in a bag and throwing the bag in a river.
The assassination didn’t take, but Charles VI was determined to avenge his (still-alive) friend anyway. So he got an army together and rode off toward Brittany, where the assassin was said to be hiding. According to legend, a barefoot leper came out of the woods as Charles VI and his army rode by and shouted ominous things like “Fie, my liege! This battle shall end in sorrow!”2 Charles VI didn’t listen and kept riding. So this extremely determined leper followed the army for half an hour, periodically poking his head out of the bushes to yell “Fie!” and “Woe!”
Halfway to Brittany, one of the squires dropped a lance or something, which made a big clanging sound. Charles VI thought his army was under attack and drew his sword on his own men, killing at least four of his own knights before the army was able to stop him.
This is further evidence of a classic historical precept: if a barefoot leper yells ominous prophecies at you for 35 minutes, turn the fuck around and go home.
A Real Pane in the Glass
Periods of intermittent psychosis filled Charles VI’s reign. Which brings us to French Anecdote I Knew About Number One: the glass delusion.
The glass delusion is a documented mental illness that’s pretty much what it says on the tin: for large portions of his life, Charles VI believed his body was made of glass and would shatter into a billion pieces if he moved wrong. He had his clothes outfitted with metal rods to stop him from cracking if he bumped into another person, and during episodes he forbade his courtiers from coming near him.
Guys, this is why I love history. The glass delusion existed basically between 1300 and 1600, and that’s it. What happened to it? Why did people believe they’d been turned into glass for 300 years and then never again? No one knows. One exception is Princess Alexandra of Bavaria, who in the 1800s believed she swallowed a glass piano as a child and couldn’t move or she’d break it.3
This fills me with the same bizarre sense of delight as the Dancing Plague of 1518. What the fuck was going on. I both yearn to know and hope we never find out.
In the Club, We All Flamme
I should have mentioned by this point that Charles VI got married at age 17 to a woman named Isabeau of Bavaria, who I personally think is awesome. When Charles VI was unable to rule due to a mental health episode, she largely took over as acting regent. Obviously, none of the men around her liked this, so for hundreds of years history has remembered her as a slutty slut who slutted around the palace sluttily. She was also regularly accused of witchcraft, with people believing she’d caused Charles’s madness so she could rule in his place and sleep with the king’s brother (like a slut).
Obviously, this is all bullshit, and she actually seemed to care for Charles and did what she could to keep him calm and taken care of during his episodes. She also tried to keep the court as fun as possible to avoid upsetting him, including starting a fashion for skirts so fucking enormous the palace architects had to physically widen the doorways so she could fit through them. Legend—and, as you’ll see in about five paragraphs, also surprisingly practical.
Anyway, in 1393, one of Queen Isabeau’s ladies-in-waiting was getting married, and Isabeau decided it was a good occasion to throw a party. She put together a lavish soirée with a big dance as the centerpiece of the entertainment and the king as one of the dancers. But because it was the late 1300s, of course there had to be a weird twist to it. And the weird twist is that all the dancers were supposed to dress up as “Wild Men of the Forest,” which apparently was a common costume at the time.
Let me describe what the costumes consisted of, and see if you can spot the problem we’re about to run into:
The dancers were sewn into their costumes
The costumes were then drenched in highly flammable pitch, which they stuck highly flammable hemp to so it would look like wild-man hair
They also wore masks made of the same material
All of the dancers were chained together at the ankles, for vibes
It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out this mystery, but let’s play it out.
The ball was in full swing, with all of the dancers really enjoying the whole Wild Man of the Forest scenario. But then the King’s brother, the Duc d’Orléans, turned up to the party late. Drunk as hell. Having missed the stern lecture on fire safety all attendees had been given an hour before (true fact). Holding a torch.
Orléans stumbled into the party and held up his torch to one of the dancers to see if he could figure out who was under the mask.
The result, in brief:
Obviously this is very bad and very tragic. Four people died an agonizing death. But you have to admit this painting is fucking incredible. Can’t decide if my favorite part is the trumpeters continuing to rock out in the corner or the little dog yelling “what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck” at bottom right.
Fortunately, one of the partygoers threw her skirt over Charles VI to prevent him from catching fire, so he was fine throughout all of this. Thank you, Isabeau and your trend-setting giant skirts!! The other dancers were not so lucky. Only one other dancer survived, by jumping in a giant vat of wine.
The kingdom was pissed off about this tragedy, which took on the name of the Bal des Ardents. They blamed Orléans, not wrongly, for the deaths. They did take it a step too far and accuse Orléans of trying to kill the king on purpose and summoning demons to murder the whole court, but I mean, they had the spirit.
Meanwhile: Secondary Character Murder Corner
This tragedy did nothing good for Charles’s mental health, and from 1393 on the kingdom was plunged into a second period of near-permanent regency. Which means…
It’s uncle time again!!
Queen Isabeau formed a Regency Council to rule in the king’s place. The King’s uncle, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, showed up immediately to start making enemies and influencing people, as he’d done during the king’s first regency. This time, he brought his son with him, a guy named John the Fearless. It’s starting to sound to me that this family’s epithets are writing checks their asses can’t cash, but time will tell.
Isabeau and the king’s brother Orléans ruled over the Regency Council for several years, leading to a dramatic ramp-up in the “slutty slutty witch” rumors. But then, in 1407, John the Fearless assassinated Orléans, as illustrated in the delightful painting below.
You’d be forgiven for thinking John the Fearless would have tried to cover up this murder, since it basically amounted to killing the regent. But not only did John the Fearless take full credit, he also went on a lecture tour telling people about how he did the murder, and he paid a priest to deliver a particularly long lecture about how great it was that he’d killed Orléans. If nothing else, you do have to admire the audacity.
Orléans’s son did not admire the audacity, and this led to basically 30 full years of feuding and civil war between the families of Burgundy and Orléans.
Final Dauphintasy XIV
What was Charles VI doing during all of this, you ask? Trying to mind his business, mostly. Also expelling all the Jews from France, but what renaissance monarch hasn’t expelled all the Jews once or twice, really?
And, of course, there was the whole Hundred Year’s War thing. TL;DR: France and England had been at war forever, because they were France and England. There was a brief moment of hope that things might turn around in 1396, when Charles VI married his daughter Isabelle to the English King Richard II. But then who had to show up and ruin it all?
Goddamn Henry V.
I absolutely refuse to talk about Salic Law in this newsletter, but basically, Henry V believed he deserved to be King of France because ~*reasons*~, so in 1415 he put together an army and sailed over to France to try to seize the throne. Charles VI was in no shape to lead the army at this point, so his son the Dauphin basically took over as military commander.
Imagine my surprise to learn that Bones Made of Glass King, Dancing OSHA Violation King, and We Few We Happy Few We Band of Brothers King are ALL THE SAME KING. What a guy, Charles VI.
Famously, the French lost the battle of Agincourt in 1415. In 1420, Charles VI signed the Treaty of Troyes, which said Henry V’s heirs would be the next kings of France. This involved disinheriting the Dauphin, Charles VI’s actual son, which would be sad if I wasn’t picturing the Dauphin as Robert Pattinson from the 2019 movie The King, which makes it very funny, actually.
What happened then, you ask?
Well, to put it briefly: everyone died.
First Henry V died in August 1422, aged 36. Then, like nine weeks later, King Charles VI died, aged 54. The Dauphin was pissed that a baby had jumped him in line to the throne and went and got Joan of Arc to fight for his right to rule. This worked eventually, because England was distracted by a little thing called the Wars of the Roses.
But we are now so far off track the story of Charles VI because history just kept careening off without him, so let’s call it here for today before I have to write about the Yorks and the Lancasters.
RIP to Charles VI and a tip of the hat to him for the profusion of strange anecdotes that peppered his rule. He should never have been king, but if everyone who shouldn’t have been king historically wasn’t king, we’d have…not a lot of kings.
That’s all for this time, friends! Until next time, be well, and if you’re planning on throwing a rave at your friend’s wedding please check the venue for sprinklers and keep drunk relatives with torches outside the premises,
-Allison
I’ll do a De Guise Family Dirtbags newsletter someday, I promise.
Not exactly this, obviously, but the vibe overall was “fie” all the way down.
Princess Alexandra is actually the aunt of my favorite historical HGTV Theater Queer King Ludwig II, if you’re keeping score at home of the trials and tribulations besetting that family.
I also knew these anecdotes separately but my mind is suitably blown that they were all the same guy. I guess there's just too much to talk about for your average anecdote-telling session.
The scepter is in fact making a finger gun. We may be looking at an unfortunate consequence of a man the age of a college sophomore taking the reins of power. On the other hand, it might mean that old Burger King ad with the king mascot was surprisingly well-researched.