Charles the Bold

Charles the Bold was duke of Burgundy from 1467 to 1477 and sought to turn his scattered territories into an independent kingdom between France and the Holy Roman Empire. His aggressive campaigns brought him into conflict with Louis XI, the Swiss Confederacy and the duke of Lorraine. After defeats at Grandson and Morat, he was killed at Nancy, and the Burgundian state was divided through the marriage of his heir Mary.

Walter Scott’s Anne of Geierstein uses Charles and the Burgundian Wars as major historical material, while Dorothy Dunnett’s House of Niccolò series follows merchants and courtiers through the political world shaped by his ambitions. Fiction is drawn to his magnificence, anger and refusal to compromise. He is often presented as the last great chivalric duke, although his government also depended on sophisticated finance and administration.

In Sir Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward, the mission becomes part of the larger contest between Louis and Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Dorothy Dunnett’s The Unicorn Hunt is set in 1468, Nicholas enters Scotland under the cover of expanding his banking and trading interests while pursuing answers about his wife Gelis, their child and his own disputed parentage. Other novels featuring Charles the Bold include Dorothy Dunnett’s To Lie with Lions.