Charlotte, Queen of Cyprus

Charlotte was queen of Cyprus from 1458 and a member of the Lusignan dynasty. Her claim was challenged by her illegitimate half-brother James, who secured Mamluk and Genoese support and drove her from the island. Charlotte and her husband Louis of Savoy attempted to recover Cyprus but spent most of their later lives in exile. She eventually transferred her claim to the house of Savoy, which preserved the title for centuries.

Charlotte’s contested throne appears in Dorothy Dunnett’s House of Niccolò series, especially The Race of Scorpions, which places fictional merchants amid the violent politics of Cyprus. The conflict offers novelists a meeting point of Latin, Greek, Mamluk, Venetian and Genoese interests. Charlotte can be portrayed either as the legitimate dispossessed queen or as one participant in a broader struggle over a strategically valuable island.