As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This means if you click on a link and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Historical person
died 1314
Jacques de Molay was the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar. He was arrested during Philip IV of France’s campaign against the order and burned in Paris in 1314 after refusing to sustain confessions extracted under pressure.
In Maurice Druon’s The Iron King, his destruction of the Knights Templar reaches its final stage with the execution of Jacques de Molay, whose legendary curse becomes the symbolic beginning of the dynasty's collapse. Jack Whyte’s Order in Chaos places Jacques de Molay within a narrative shaped by court politics and dynastic power and family, marriage and personal loyalty.
In non-fiction, Jacques de Molay is discussed in Dan Jones’s The Templars. In Dan Jones’s The Templars, Philip IV of France arrested the Templars, extracted confessions through coercion and pressed the papacy towards suppression, while the last grand master, Jacques de Molay, was executed.
Series
The Templar trilogy follows members of the St. Clair family and a secret brotherhood whose history is bound to the rise and destruction of the Knights Templar. Beginning in the aftermath of the First Crusade, the sequence moves through the disasters of Hattin and the Third Crusade before…
All books in this series
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…
All books in this series
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
