← Back to the front page

Odd Solutions to Historic Problems

Khalid Elhassan December 9, 2020 32 min

United States - American Civil War — Young recruits during the Vietnam War, circa 1967. History

6. A King Who Justly Earned the Name “The Bad”

King John II ‘The Good’ of France ordering the arrest of Charles the Bad. Wikimedia

Charles II of Navarre, AKA Charles the Bad (1332 – 1387) was a powerful French magnate, with extensive holdings in Normandy and other parts of France. From 1349, he was also the king of Navarre, a small kingdom on the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. He was obsessed with trying to expand his tiny realm at the expense of his more powerful neighbors. He earned the epitaph “the Bad” because of his nonstop intriguing, bad faith dealings, betrayals, dishonesty, and double-crosses in his quest for a solution to the problem of big dreams coupled with little means.

During the Hundred Years War, he plotted with the English to betray France. He was arrested and imprisoned by the French King John II, AKA John the Good, when his treachery came to light. Charles escaped from prison and 1357, and began a series of intrigues with various French parties, betraying nearly all, one after the other.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.