1319-1364
King Of France

Famous Family. One of the greatest royal families of the French Middle Ages was the Valois dynasty. In the course of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, the Valois became dukes and countesses (for example, Louis, Duke of Orleans, and Jeanne, Countess of Bar), empresses and queens (for example, Catherine of Constantinople and Madeleine of Scotland), archbishops and abbesses (for example, Michel de Bucy and Madeleine of Orleans), and after 1328 the kings of France when the Capetian Charles IV died leaving no sons. The Valois had in fact started out as nobles—their rise to power stemmed from their having created a lineage from Charles, Count of Valois, the brother of King Philip IV the Fair of France. Hardly a pivotal figure in the rise to power of the Valois, the renown of John II in particular would rest in part...