True Stories #421 - The Mad King

France's King Charles VI was convinced his medical condition might kill him, but his mind was lying to his matter.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Seth Andrews, and what you're about to hear is
a true story. King Charles the sixth was convinced that
his medical condition had put him in grave danger. His
body was so fragile that physical contact with the outside

(00:23):
world might literally break him. He was so paranoid that
this fear, this phobia, this delusion pretty much consumed him
twenty four to seven. Charles the sixth was the king
of France from thirteen eighty until the day of his
death in fourteen twenty two. He died at fifty three.

(00:43):
He had ascended the throne at the young age of
eleven as heir to his father, Charles the fifth. As
he became king when not even a teenager, he was
put under the regency of his royal uncles. These were
various dukes from across the lands, and after nine years
under there authority, he would cut those ties to begin

(01:03):
his own rule at the age of twenty. But young
Charles was already showing signs that he was not mentally well.
One military expedition against rebels in Brittany saw him order
an attack on his own men in a paranoid rage.
In thirteen ninety two, he slaughtered four of his own nights.

(01:24):
The next year, for some occasion, Charles and five companions
dressed up as half human wild maned beasts in fur clothing,
until an errant spark from a nearby flame ignited the
flying rags and quickly set the room and the costumes
on fire. Charles and one companion got out, the other

(01:45):
four burned to death. History would eventually call this calamity
the Dance of the Burning Men. More erratic behavior soon followed,
until the dukes were again brought in to literally rein
him in. In fact, royal power would then mostly be
held by those influential uncles and Charles's wife, Queen Isabeau,

(02:08):
And yet she was still king. He was a king
with psychosis, a king who believed that his body was
so brittle and breakable that even a brush with another
human being might seriously injure or kill him. And remember
we're talking about the medieval era. Modern psychiatry wasn't there
to diagnose or treat him properly. Future experts would speculate

(02:32):
that Charles might have been suffering side effects from typhus,
side effects from arsenic poisoning, schizophrenia, manic depression, or some
other neurological condition, and the king's public decline would shift
public opinion about him. Where he was once known by
the nickname Charles the Beloved, his French countrymen and women

(02:53):
would often whisper about Charles the Mad. History books chronicle
many of his episodes. On one occasion in thirteen ninety three,
the king forgot he was king and he could not
remember his own name. Two years after that, he would
make a bizarre claim he believed he was in fact
Saint George and his royal robe was the skin of

(03:16):
a dead lion. Sometimes he could be seen running wildly
through the corridors and blasting through the doors of the
Royal Palace. Many of those doors were sealed and walls
were reinforced to keep the mad king out of public view.
In fourteen oh five, for a period of five months,

(03:36):
King Charles the sixth refused to take a bath or
even change his clothes. Almost half a year oh He
would issue various decrees, including an alarming ban on all
Jews from his domains in thirteen ninety four, but many
of those commands would just be ignored, overruled, or only

(03:58):
slightly enforced. His wife and brother would pretty much grab
the reins of power, and as you can imagine, those
years saw speculation and rumor about ambition, motivation affairs, the
kind of drama that we've come to expect from royal families.
But until his death he would be the official king.

(04:19):
So convinced his body was made of a foreign and
fragile material that he became afraid to even leave his home.
After all, any bump against a door, any strong handshake
and he stumbled to the ground might cause him to break,
or perhaps the better word here is to shatter. Because

(04:43):
King Charles the sixth believed that he was made of glass,
and this condition had been occasionally seen beyond the world
of the mad King. Those who were afflicted became known
as the glass men, the condition called melancholia at the time.
Some glass men were so terrified they might crack and

(05:06):
collapsed that they huddled in upon themselves and lived in isolation.
Others saw their translucent form the result of alchemy. They
had been blessed to be transmuted into precious crystal, even
more precious than gold or silver. Their glassy skin was
like a chalice containing elevated essence. Now are there people

(05:30):
today who like King Charles, the sixth of Friends, are
convinced they could shatter into one thousand tiny shards. It
is possible that they are out there, which means they
literally live in glass houses, terrified that someone like us
might cast the first stone. And the tale of a

(05:55):
mad king with an imagined glass body and a truly
shatow heard mind is a true story True Stories podcast
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