Charles VI of France

Charles VI became king at eleven in 1380, inheriting a France largely reclaimed from English control. He threw off his uncles' regency at twenty, but in 1392, leading troops toward Brittany, he suffered his first episode of delirium and turned on his own men in the forest of Le Mans. After nearly burning to death at the Bal des Ardents in January 1393, he was placed back under regency, cycling between lucidity and madness for the rest of his life. His uncles, his wife Isabeau, and his brother Louis of Orléans jockeyed for control; the feud between Orléans and Burgundy ignited a civil war that…