The Horrific Final Days of Charles VI of France

October 21, 1422. Charles VI of France dies at Hôtel Saint-Pol in Paris, his last words just one name repeated over and over: "Odette...Odette...Odette." But Odette de Champdivers wasn't his wife—she was a teenage girl who'd spent 15 years dressing in the queen's clothes and pretending to be Queen Isabeau while caring for the mad king. Charles never knew the difference.

For 30 of his 42-year reign, Charles VI believed his body was made of glass and would shatter if touched. He had iron rods sewn into his clothes for reinforcement, sat motionless for days terrified of breaking, and screamed in terror if anyone brushed against him. Based on contemporary chronicles from Froissart and the Monk of Saint-Denis, medical records of attempted treatments including trepanation, eyewitness accounts of the 1393 Ball of the Burning Men disaster, and the Treaty of Troyes signed while Charles was in his glass delusion, the mad king's death reveals how one man's mental illness nearly destroyed France—then accidentally saved it.

📚 WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER:
✓ Why Charles died calling for "Odette" who'd pretended to be his wife for 15 years
✓ The glass delusion: believing his body would shatter, iron rods sewn in clothes
✓ The 1392 mental break: how a dropped lance made him attack and kill his own men
✓ The Ball of the Burning Men (1393): four nobles burned alive in flaming costumes
✓ How physicians drilled holes in his skull (trepanation) trying to cure him
✓ The Treaty of Troyes (1420): how Charles gave France to England while mad

📖 SOURCES:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...
https://www.worldhistory.org/Charles_...
https://www.thecollector.com/charles-...
https://brewminate.com/charles-vi-mad...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal_des...

🎓 HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE:
Charles VI's madness demonstrates how mental illness in absolute monarchy can destroy a nation. His glass delusion—the first well-documented case of this specific psychiatric symptom—made him non-functional for decades while France collapsed into civil war (Armagnacs vs. Burgundians), lost at Agincourt (1415), and was legally given to England via the Treaty of Troyes (1420). Modern psychiatrists identify probable paranoid schizophrenia, possibly triggered by the 1392 fever before his first psychotic break.

👑 MORE DEVASTATING ROYAL MENTAL ILLNESS & DEATH:

   • Historical Investigations  

Subscribe for investigations into how royal mental illness shaped history, when psychiatric symptoms destroyed kingdoms, and the human tragedy behind the Mad King who believed he would shatter like glass.

💬 HISTORICAL DISCUSSION:
Which aspect is most tragic: dying calling for "Odette" who'd impersonated his wife for 15 years, the 30 years of glass delusion terror, or signing away France to England while unable to understand what he was doing? How did his madness accidentally save France through his grandson Louis XI?
#CharlesVI #FrenchHistory #MadKing #GlassDelusion #MedievalHistory #14thCentury #15thCentury #FrenchMonarchy #HundredYearsWar #MedievalFrance #HistoricalPsychiatry #MentalIllness #TreatyOfTroyes #HistoricalTragedy #royalhistory