2. When You’re So Awful That You Become Known as “The Bad”
King Charles II of Navarre (1332 – 1387), infamously known as Charles the Bad, was a powerful French magnate with extensive holdings throughout France. From 1349, he was also the king of Navarre, a small kingdom on the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. He became known as “the Bad” because of his propensity for intrigues, bad faith dealings, betrayals, dishonesty, and double-crosses as he attempted to expand his kingdom at his neighbors’ expense. During the Hundred Years War, he plotted with the English to betray France, and was arrested and imprisoned by the French King John II when his treachery came to light.
Charles escaped from prison and 1357, and began a series of intrigues with a variety of French parties, betraying nearly all, one after the other. After John II’s death, his successor forced Charles to renounce most of his holdings in France. In 1378, Charles the Bad was forced to cede nearly all of his remaining French holding when evidence of new treachery was discovered. He had not only planned to again betray France to the English but plotted to go one better this time and poison the French king while he was at it.
