Maurice Druon

1918–2009

Maurice Druon is important for readers interested in dynastic crisis, monarchy, succession and the politics that lead into the Hundred Years’ War.

Maurice Druon was born in Paris in 1918 and came from a literary family. During the Second World War he joined the Free French in London. With his uncle, the writer Joseph Kessel, he wrote the French words associated with the resistance anthem Le Chant des Partisans. After the war he built a prominent career as a novelist and public intellectual, winning the Prix Goncourt and later becoming a member and permanent secretary of the Académie française. He also served as France’s minister of cultural affairs.

Druon is best known internationally for The Accursed Kings, a sequence beginning with The Iron King. The novels trace the dynastic crisis of the French monarchy in the early fourteenth century, moving through the fall of the Templars, disputed succession, court intrigue and the political conditions that preceded the Hundred Years’ War. Druon writes history as a chain of personal resentments, legal disputes and unintended consequences, with bankers, queens and royal advisers playing roles as decisive as kings. He died in 2009. The series has had a strong influence on later political historical fiction and remains a compelling introduction to Capetian France and medieval dynastic politics.

Periods and events

Medieval Period Late Medieval Hundred Years’ War Hundred Years’ War in France Medieval France Artois Succession Dispute Invasion of England and Deposition of Edward II Battle of Poitiers (1356) Black Death

Series

Series by Maurice Druon (1 series)

The Accursed Kings in Order

by Maurice Druon 7 books 4.2

The Accursed Kings follows the French and English monarchies from the final year of Philip IV's reign in 1314 to the capture of John II at Poitiers and the political crisis of the late 1350s. Across seven novels, the direct Capetian line fails, the Valois dynasty takes the…