Charles, Duke of Orléans

Short Biography

Charles of Valois (24 November 1394, Paris – 5 January 1465, Amboise) was Duke of Orléans from 1407, following the murder of his father, Louis, Duke of Orléans on the orders of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. He was also Duke of Valois, Count of Beaumont-sur-Oise and of Blois, lord of Coucy, and the inheritor of Asti in Italy via his mother Valentina Visconti, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. He is now remembered as an accomplished poet owing to the more than five hundred extant poems he produced, most written during his twenty-four years spent as a prisoner of war.