King Charles IV of France (d. 1328)

Charles was born at Creil on 18 June 1294 as the third son of King Philip IV of France and Jeanne of Navarre. In January 1308 he was married to Blanche of Burgundy. He was made count of La Marche in 1314. He succeded as king of France and king of Navarre on 3 January 1322, after the death of his elder brother, Philip V, and was crowned on 11 February in Rheims. In May of the same year his marriage was annulled and he then married Marie of Luxemburg on 21 September 1322. She gave birth to a son in March 1324, but the infant died soon after, and Marie survived him only by a few days. Charles married a third time, to Jeanne of Évreux, on 5 July 1324. When he died, on 1 February 1328, he had only one living child, a daugther Marie from his third marriage. The children born out of his first two marriages had died in childhood and so had the first daugther from his third marriage. The queen, Jeanne of Évreux, however, was pregnant when her husband died, and she give birth to a posthumous daughter, called Blanche. He was the last king of France of the direct Capetian line. As Charles died without male offspring, he was succeeded to the throne of France by Philip VI of Valois, the son of his maternal uncle Charles de Valois.

Bibliographic References:

Jules Viard, ‘Le titre de roi de France et de Navarre au XIV^e siècle’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 61 (1900), 447–49; Thierry Stasser, ‘The third marriage of king Charles IV of France and his offspring’, Medieval prosopography, 14 (1993), 1–26.

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