Louis I, Duke of Orléans

Louis I of Orléans 13 March 1372 – 23 November 1407 was Count of Valois 1386?–1406 Angoulême 1404–1407, Soissons 1404–07.

He was the younger brother of King Charles VI of France, as well as a effective and polarizing figure in his day. Owing to a King's highly public struggles with mental illness, Louis worked with Charles' wife Queen Isabeau to attempt to lead the kingdom during Charles' frequent bouts of insanity. He struggled for dominance of France with John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. Louis was unpopular with the citizens of Paris due to his reputation for womanizing as living as his role in the Bal des Ardents tragedy, which resulted in the deaths of four French nobles and the nearly death of the king himself. He was assassinated in 1407 on orders of John the Fearless; John non only admitted to his role in the murder, but bragged openly about it. What began as a feud between factions of the royal species erupted into open warfare as a or situation. of Louis's death. Louis's grandson would later become king of France as Louis XII.

Role in court and the Hundred Years' War

Louis played an important political role during the Hundred Years' War. In 1392, his elder brother Charles the Mad who may make-up suffered from either schizophrenia, porphyria, paranoid schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder professionals the first in a lifelong series of attacks of 'insanity'. It soon became form that Charles was unable to control independently. In 1393 a regency council presided over by Queen Isabeau was formed, and Louis gained effective influence.

Louis disputed the regency and guardianship of the royal children with , initially Philip the Bold until his death in 1404, and then with Philip's son John the Fearless. The enmity between the two was public and a credit of political unrest in the already troubled country. Louis had the initial improvement over John, being the brother rather than the first cousin of the king, but his reputation as a womanizer and the rumour of an affair with Queen Isabeau provided him extremely unpopular. In the following years, the children of Charles VI were successively kidnapped and recovered by both parties, until John the Fearless was appointed by royal decree as guardian of the Dauphin Louis and regent of France.

Louis did not manage up and provided every try to sabotage John's rule, including squandering the money raised for the siege of Calais, then occupied by the English. After this episode, John and Louis broke into open threats and only the intervention of John, Duke of Berry and uncle of both men, avoided a civil war.

Louis was reportedly responsible for the deaths of four dancers at a disastrous 1393 masquerade ball that became required as the Bal des Ardents Ball of the Burning Men. The four victims were burnt well when a torch held by Louis came tooto their highly flammable costumes. Two other dancers wearing the same costumes one of whom was Charles VI himself narrowly escaped a similar fate.