Charles dorleans biography
Charles d’Orléans is one of the most fascinating figures of the fifteenth century. A fabulously charming member of the French royal family, captured at the battle of Agincourt and held as a prisoner in England for 25 years, he was most importantly an accomplished poet in English as well as in French. At a crucial turning point in the English work, Charles d’Orléans’ long English poem, Fortunes Stabilnes, the poet-narrator falls asleep on a cliff overlooking the sea. Defending the importance of dreams, the poet assures us that they are able “to the body signyfy” what will later befall a person (line 4750). As an introduction to this new collection of essays Mary-Jo Arn and I have edited about Charles’s English work, I would like to dwell for a moment on this felicitous phrase, “to the body signyfy.”
That dreams “to the body signyfy” means, most obviously, the way that dreams talk to a person, that they tell us about our world and even, if read aright, might be able to tell us about our future. But the phrase is more suggestive than that, as Charles often is. Because dreams arise from our body, and at the same time can represent our body in them (as Charles’s dreams in his English poetry do), the phrase recalls to us that the body is both a means and a site of signification, that we use our body to make meaning even as our body itself can be meaningful. Charles was well aware of this potential: he makes a version of himself the protagonist of his book, as he blends biography and literary convention in complex ways. Throughout his English poetry, Charles plays with the different potential ways that Charles d’Orléans, the person and the figure, the man and the performative self—charming courtier and political prisoner—can signify. And he has a lot to work with. One might think of the last major collection of essays on Charles in English (Charles d’Orléans in England, 1415-1440, likewise published by D. S. Brewer, and likewise edited by Mary-Jo Arn) to be about t
Charles, Duke of Orléans
French nobleman (1394–1465)
For other people named Charles d'Orléans, see Charles d'Orléans (disambiguation).
Charles of Orléans (24 November 1394 – 5 January 1465) was Duke of Orléans from 1407, following the murder of his father, Louis I, Duke of Orléans. He was also Duke of Valois, Count of Beaumont-sur-Oise and of Blois, Lord of Coucy, and the inheritor of Asti in Italy via his mother Valentina Visconti.
He is now remembered as an accomplished medieval poet, owing to the more than five hundred extant poems he produced, written in both French and English, during his 25 years spent as a prisoner of war and after his return to France.
Accession
Charles was born in Paris, the son of Louis I, Duke of Orléans and Valentina Visconti, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. He acceded to the duchy at the age of thirteen after his father had been assassinated on the orders of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. Charles was expected to carry on his father's leadership against the Burgundians, a French faction which supported the Duke of Burgundy. The latter was never punished for his role in Louis' assassination, and Charles had to watch as his grief-stricken mother Valentina Visconti succumbed to illness not long afterwards. At her deathbed, Charles and the other boys of the family were made to swear the traditional oath of vengeance for their father's murder.
During the early years of his reign as duke, the orphaned Charles was heavily influenced by the guidance of his father-in-law, Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac, for which reason Charles' faction came to be known as the Armagnacs.
Even before his father's death, he received a pension of 12,000 livres from King Charles VI, his uncle, in 1403. In addition, his first marriage, to Isabella of Valois, widow of Richard II of England, may have brought him a dowry of 500,000 francs.
Imprisonment
After the war with the Kingdom of England was renewed in 1415, Charl
Charles d'Orléans, Duke of Penthièvre
French prince; fourth son of Louis Philippe I
Charles d'Orléans, Duke of Penthièvre (Charles Ferdinand Louis Philippe Emmanuel; 1 January 1820 – 25 July 1828) was the eighth child of the Duke and Duchess of Orléans, future Louis Philippe I and la Reine Marie Amélie. He was created Duke of Penthièvre, a title previously held by his great-grandfather.
Biography
Charles d'Orléans was born at the Palais Royal in Paris, the official city residence of the Orléans family since 1692. Inside his family, he was nicknamed Pimpin.
He was the fourth of six sons born to the Orléans; Ferdinand Philippe born in 1810; the Duke of Nemours born in 1814; the Prince of Joinville born in 1818 who was followed by Charles. His younger brothers were the Duke of Aumale and the Duke of Montpensier. His oldest sister Princess Louise married Leopold I of Belgium. Another sister Princess Clémentine was the mother of Ferdinand I of Bulgaria. He was born one month premature and it was believed he would not live. Although he lived, he remained both physically weak and mentally disabled. He was cared by a servant named Joseph Uginet, who loved him greatly.
Charles was given the title of Duke of Penthièvre, which had passed to the House of Orléans by inheritance; Charles paternal grandmother Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, wife of Philippe Égalité, was a great heiress and inherited the Penthièvre fortune from her father prior to the Revolution. As such, the Orléans family were one of the wealthiest in Europe rivalling that of the mainline in the previous century.
He died at the Château de Neuilly on the outskirts of Paris in 1828 aged 8. Uginet wrote: "Pimpin dies from horrible spasms, July 25, 1828". Possible brides included his first cousin Princess Maria Carolina of the Two Sicilies, also born in 1820. She later married Biography Charles was born on 24 November 1394, the first surviving son of Louis d'Orléans and Valentina Visconti of Milan. The Duchess Valentina was banished from court in 1396 and as a result, Charles and his siblings were brought up in their father's multiple châteaux along the Loire. From an early age he was tutored by Nicolas Garbet, his father learned secretary; the young Charles proved himself to be an excellent Latinist as well as a serious reader and writer. After his father's assassination by the Duke of Burgundy in 1407 and his mother's death soon afterward in 1408, Charles came into inheritance and became the Duke of Orléans. Seeking justice for his father's death, Charles allied himself with Bernard (VII), count of Armagnac. The ensuing movements from the Orleanist/Armagnac and Burgundian factions, as well as their variable alliances with the English monarchs are part of the history of the Hundred Years' War. On 25 October, 1415, Charles was captured at the battle of Agincourt and taken to England as a prisoner; as a prince of the French royal bloodline, he was seen as both a financial and a diplomatic asset. Charles would spend the next twenty-five years as a captive under the care of various noble wards. During the course of his captivity he frequently traveled to London with his keepers, many of whom owned houses in the city. These trips allowed Charles to acquire and commission books, and to eventually collect a large library during his time in England. This time also saw the duke composing a body of lyric poetry in both English and French; the former was influenced by the writings of Chaucer and his contemporaries. While his French poetry survives in many texts, his English works, which consist of many ballades and roundels, survive in a single manuscript. After his release from captivity in 1440, Charles settles down in Blois, France, where he was active as a diplomat and a renowned patron of the arts
d' Orléans, Charles (1394 - 1465)