Best Historical Novels About John I of France

John I of France

1316–1316

John I of France, known as John the Posthumous, was born after the death of his father Louis X and lived only a few days in 1316. His brief life created a succession crisis that helped define later French rules on female succession.

John I of France also held the offices or ranks of King of France, King of Navarre, and sovereign of Navarre. John I of France belonged to the Capetian dynasty. John I of France was born in Paris.

Maurice Druon’s The Royal Succession turns the birth and death of the infant John I into the hinge of a dynastic crisis. Born after Louis X’s death, John survives only days, leaving Philip of Poitiers to convert a temporary regency into a claim to the French crown. Druon fictionalises the infant’s death as part of the series’ web of conspiracy, but the political consequence is historical: John’s brief reign strengthens the exclusion of Louis’s daughter Joan and helps establish the succession principle later associated with Salic law.

Historical novels and book series featuring John I of France (1 series)

The Accursed Kings in Order

by Maurice Druon 7 books 4.2(8,269)

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…