Charles (12 March 1270 – 16 December 1325), count of Valois, was a member of the House of Capet and founder of the House of Valois, which ruled over France from 1328 to 1589. He was the fourth son of King Philip III of France and Isabella of Aragon.
Charles ruled several principalities. He held in appanage the counties of Valois, Alençon (1285), and Perche. He became Count of Anjou and Maine through his first marriage to Margaret, Countess of Anjou. Through his second marriage to Catherine I, Latin Empress of Constantinople, he was titular Latin Emperor of Constantinople from 1301 to 1307, although he ruled from exile and only had authority over Crusader States in Greece.
As the grandson of King Louis IX of France, Charles of Valois was a son, brother, brother-in-law and son-in-law of kings or queens (of France, Navarre, England and Naples), and was the heir presumptive to the throne of France from 1322 to 1324 and then again from 1324 until his death in 1325. His descendants, the House of Valois, would become the royal house of France three years after his death, beginning with his eldest son King Philip VI of France.
Contents
Life
Besides holding in appanage the counties of Valois, Alençon and Perche, Charles became in 1290 the Count of Anjou and of Maine by his first marriage with Margaret of Anjou, the eldest daughter of King Charles II of Naples, titular King of Sicily; by a second marriage that he contracted with the heiress of Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople, last Latin emperor of Constantinople, he also had pretensions to the throne of Constantinople.
From his early years, Charles of Valois dreamed of more and sought all his life for a crown he never obtained. Starting in 1284, Pope Martin IV recognized him as King of Aragon (under the vassalage of the Holy See), as the son of his mother, Isabella of Aragon, in opposition to King Peter III of Aragon, who after the conquest of the island of Sicily was an enemy of the Papacy. Charles hence married Margaret, the daughter of the Neapolitan king, in order to re-enforce his position in Sicily which was supported by the Pope. Thanks to this Aragonese Crusade undertaken by his father King Philip III against the advice of his elder brother Philip IV, he believed he would win a kingdom and however won nothing but the ridicule of having been crowned with a cardinal's hat in 1285, which gave him the alias of the "King of the Cap." He would never dare to use the royal seal which was made on this occasion and had to renounce the title.
Amid the Gascon and Franco-Flemish Wars, Charles commanded effectively in Flanders in 1297.
Campaign in Italy and Invasion of Sicily
Dreaming of an imperial crown, in 1301 Charles married the titular empress of Constantinople, Catherine of Courtenay. The marriage drew Charles closer to the papacy, as his new marriage needed the connivance of Pope Boniface VIII. Boniface saw Charles as a potential ally and tool to further papal influence; the pope desired to re-install a Catholic ruler on the throne of the Byzantine Empire and thus revive the Latin Empire, which Charles now had a claim to. Boniface was also eager to end the nearly 20-year long war between the papacy, Angevin Naples, and Sicily, and so hoped to have Charles' army invade Sicily.
Named papal vicar, Charles of Valois led a private French army into Italy. However, he soon lost himself in the complexity of Italian politics, namely the generational feud between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. Local nobles and church officials used his army as a tool against their political rivals, and men under his command massacred a crowd in Florence. When his army landed on the shores of Sicily in May 1302, it faced heavy resistance from the Sicilian population. Charles' army pushed inland, but became mired in attritional warfare in the hot Sicilian summer; after a disastrous attempt to besiege Sciacca, Charles' army found itself out of supplies and surrounded on the southern coast of Sicily. Rather than see his army destroyed, Charles negotiated the Peace of Caltabellotta with the Sicilian leadership, thus ending the war of the Vespers. The Sicilian campaign had been a disaster; Charles' battered army had been forced to evacuate the island without having fought a major battle, and the treaty ended Angevin and papal attempts to re-conquer Sicily.
After his marriage to Catherine, Charles decided to reclaim his wife's empire. To fulfil this eastern ambition he had to secure the support of all those influential political figures of the time. The first and foremost was his brother, Philip IV of France.
Indeed, Philip promised to help his brother and gave assurances that he would do so by offering him some money, but in reality, he was too enmeshed in the war with Flanders which was at a critical point as the French had suffered a major disaster at the battle of Courtrai in 1302 to seriously consider a crusader expedition to Byzantium, not least his conflict with pope Boniface VIII which erupted in 1302. Boniface VIII's publication of the bull Unam Sanctam in November 1302 which asserted the papal supremacy precipitated the crisis with the king of France. Following the publication of the bull Philip IV went on to publish a series of forged letters dated on 5 December to induce the national feeling of the French clergy and people. To be sure, the French king and his officials Guillame de Nogaret and Guillame de Plaisians condemned the pope in two assemblies that took place in March and June 1303 in Paris in front of the French the prelature and nobility. On his behalf Charles of Valois tried to mediate the situation between his brother and the pope but to no avail. The "outrage of Anagni" followed and the death of pope Boniface VIII thereon.
Claimant to German throne and the politics of the French court
Charles was back in shape to seek a new crown when the German King Albert I of Germany was murdered in 1308. Charles's brother King Philip IV, who did not wish to take the risk himself of a check and probably thought that a French puppet on the imperial throne would be a good thing for France, encouraged him. The candidacy was defeated with the election of Henry VII of Luxembourg as German king, for the electors did not want France to become even more powerful. Charles thus continued to dream of the eastern crown of the Courtenays.
He did benefit from the affection which his brother King Philip, who had suffered from the remarriage of their father, brought to his only full brother, and Charles thus found himself given responsibilities which largely exceeded his talent. Thus it was he who directed, in 1311, the royal embassy to the conferences of Tournai with the Flemish; he quarreled there with his brother's chamberlain Enguerrand de Marigny, who openly defied him. Charles did not pardon the affront and would continue the vendetta against Marigny after his brother King Philip's death.
In 1314, Charles of Valois was doggedly opposed to the torture of Jacques de Molay, grand master of the Templars.
The premature death of Charles's nephew, King Louis X of France, in 1316, gave Charles hopes for a political role. However, he could not prevent his nephew (Louis X's younger brother) Philip the Tall from taking the regency while awaiting the birth of Louis's posthumous child. Louis's son died a few days after his birth, and Philip took the throne as King Philip V. Charles was initially opposed to Philip's succession, for Philip's elder brother had left behind a daughter, Joan of France, his only surviving child. However, Charles later switched sides and eventually backed his nephew Philip, probably realizing that Philip's precedent would bring him and his line closer to the throne.
War against England
In 1324, Charles commanded with success the army of his nephew, King Charles IV of France (who succeeded his elder brother King Philip V in 1322), to take Guyenne and Flanders from King Edward II of England. He contributed, by the capture of several cities, to accelerate the peace, which was concluded between the King of France and his sister Isabella, the queen-consort of England as the wife of King Edward II.
The Count of Valois died on 16 December 1325 at Nogent-le-Roi, leaving a son who would take the throne of France under the name of Philip VI and commence the branch of the Valois. Had he survived for three more years and outlived his nephew King Charles IV, Charles might have become king of France. Charles was buried in the now-demolished church of the Couvent des Jacobins in Paris – his effigy is now in the Basilica of St Denis.
Marriages and children
Charles was married three times.
His first marriage in August 1290, was to Margaret, Countess of Anjou and Maine (1272–1299), daughter of King Charles II of Naples. They had the following children:
Isabella of Valois (1292–1309); married John, who would become Duke of Brittany.
Philip VI of France (1293 – 22 August 1350), first king of the Valois Dynasty.
Joan of Valois, Countess of Hainaut (1294 – 7 March 1342); married Count William I of Hainaut and had issue.
Margaret of Valois, Countess of Blois (1295 – July 1342); married Count Guy I of Blois, and had issue.
Charles II, Count of Alençon (1297 – 26 August 1346 at the Battle of Crécy), also Count of Perche, Chatres and Joigny. Married firstly Jeanne de Joigny, Countess of Joigny, and secondly Marie de la Cerda, the youngest daughter of Fernando de la Cerda, Lord of Lara.
Catherine (1299 – died young).
In 1302 he married Catherine I of Courtenay (1274–1307), titular Latin Empress of Constantinople. She was the daughter of Philip I, Emperor of Constantinople. They had:
John (1302–1308), Count of Chartres.
Catherine II of Valois (1303 – October 1346), succeeded as titular Empress of Constantinople and Princess of Achaea. She married Prince Philip I of Taranto and had issue.
Joan of Valois, Countess of Beaumont-le-Roger (1304 – 9 July 1363); married Robert III of Artois, Count of Beaumont-le-Roger and had issue.
In fiction
Charles is a major character in Les Rois maudits (The Accursed Kings), a series of French historical novels by Maurice Druon. He was portrayed by Jean Deschamps in the 1972 French miniseries adaptation of the series, and by Jacques Spiesser in the 2005 adaptation.
Daemon Targaryen from A Song of Ice and Fire draws significant inspiration from Charles. Both are the troublesome younger brother to a king who sets off to gain a crown of his own, only for his son to inherit the crown after his three nephews die off without male heirs. According to author George R. R. Martin, The Accursed Kings is a major influence on his own series.