Les rois maudits: Le roi de fer

The opening volume of The Accursed Kings, Maurice Druon’s celebrated seven-part historical saga of fourteenth-century France, from the trial of the Templars to the dawn of the Hundred Years’ War. The Iron King centers on Philip IV the Fair, a king of legendary beauty who ruled France as absolute master, bending or breaking all before him. A calm and cruel prince obsessed with reason of state, under his reign France was great and the French were wretched.