Charles VII of France

Charles VII of France was the Valois king who ruled from 1422 to 1461. Disinherited by the Treaty of Troyes in favour of Henry V of England and his heirs, he initially controlled only part of France and faced a powerful Anglo-Burgundian alliance.

The intervention of Joan of Arc helped secure his coronation at Reims in 1429, but the recovery of the kingdom was a longer political and military process. By the end of his reign royal finances and armies had been strengthened and most English possessions in France had been reconquered.

In Juliet Barker’s Conquest, after Agincourt, Henry V returned to France in 1417 and began a far more ambitious conquest. In G. P. R. James’ Agnes Sorel, set in France during the 1440s, Agnes Sorel places the celebrated favourite of Charles VII inside the political recovery of the French monarchy during the later Hundred Years’ War. Deryn Lake’s The King’s Women follows the future Charles VII through the dynastic crisis created by the Treaty of Troyes and shows how Yolande of Aragon, Marie of Anjou, Joan of Arc and Agnès Sorel help sustain his cause and kingship.