The third son, Charles, was only fifteen at the time, and considered too young to rule. At first his oldest son, the Dauphin Louis, ruled in his place, but Louis and his younger brother died within a short time of each other. The French king, Charles VI, suffered from a mental illness that made him unable to rule. A series of tragedies took place, on both sides of the war, in the few years following Agincourt. Joan herself does not actually appear until about a third of the way through the book. This came about through a complicated series of events, which Castor details in the first section of her book, before Joan arrives on the scene. Not only had the French suffered a string of defeats, of which Agincourt was the most famous, but they were divided among themselves, between Burgundians and Armagnacs. This battle, which to the French was a catastrophic defeat, set the stage for the part of the war in which Joan was involved. Castor begins her book in 1415 with the victory of the English under Henry V over the French at the Battle of Agincourt, an event which will be familiar to everyone who has seen Shakespeare's Henry V or one of its film adaptations. The subtitle, A History, is very appropriate. Helen Castor's Joan of Arc is more of a history of Joan's times, and the portion of the Hundred Years' War in which she played a leading role, than a biography.
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