Worst Monarch of France?

Worst French Monarch?

  • John II the Good

    Votes: 8 7.8%
  • Henry I

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Philip IV the Fair

    Votes: 1 1.0%
  • Charles VI the Beloved, the Mad

    Votes: 12 11.7%
  • Charles IX

    Votes: 1 1.0%
  • Louis XV the Beloved

    Votes: 7 6.8%
  • Louis XVI the Restorer of French Liberty

    Votes: 17 16.5%
  • Philip VI the Fortunate

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Charles X

    Votes: 35 34.0%
  • Napoleon III

    Votes: 10 9.7%
  • Louis-Philippe I the Citizen-King

    Votes: 4 3.9%
  • Other? Specify.

    Votes: 4 3.9%
  • Louis VII

    Votes: 1 1.0%
  • Louis XIV

    Votes: 3 2.9%

  • Total voters
    103
  • Poll closed .
I'd say Edward III, King of France. No matter how much military success he might have had, when it's inflicted on your own people it still makes you the worst King of France. Especially since he started a war of France vs France which went on for over a hundred years.
To be fair,Philip VI started it.Edward never really thought that he would get the French throne to begin with.It was just an excuse for fighting against his liege with a higher moral ground when Philip tried to confiscate what remained of Plantagenet land in France.
 
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Nitpick: He would be Edward I of France, Edward III of England, no?
Strictly speaking yes, unless they end up anticipating the modern British convention that monarchs of multiple kingdoms should be called by the highest regnal number.
 
Does Napoleon III really deserve to be the worst French monarch? I think he might qualify as the worst Bonaparte more appropriately...
 
I understand that much, but that's my point. He completely disregarded diplomacy in favour of an army that accounted for 55% of the government's budget durring peace times. The diplomatic option would probably fail as well, but the fact that he never tried it goes back to my point about him being a better general than king. A head of state who's only willing to use some of his tools is pretty limiting.
Saying he never tried Diplomacy is a bit forgetting that he was behind the peaces of Luneville and especially Amiens. And in-between each coalitions, he was hoping that things would finally quiet down. Hell, from a certain POV, his defeat in the Saxon Campaign of 1813 is basically because he tried to negotiate peace and his ennemies took advantage of that...

It's not just that Napoleon was using force of arms only, it's also a bit because he was facing people who could only be resonated by force of arms most of the time...
 
I'd say Edward III, King of France. No matter how much military success he might have had, when it's inflicted on your own people it still makes you the worst King of France. Especially since he started a war of France vs France which went on for over a hundred years.

If we're going to be funny about this, then surely worse than Edward III as King of France, is Henry VI and (disputed) II of England and France. It is one thing thing for Napoleon to lose France to the combined forces of Europe, it is another to lose France to a competing French state which at times didn't even hold Paris.

More seriously, I can see the case for Charles X being the worst just based on his misunderstanding about the new factors which played in France. It's a forgiveable and understandable error on his part but a significant error none-the-less.
 
With all due respect, again: why Philip IV then? This is, quite litterally, the first time I hear of him a bad monarch (if one exclude, as I do, the whole Templar-obsessed conspiracy crowd).

He was a bad man rather than a bad king. His villainy was directed -- successfully on the whole -- in the cause of the greater glory of France.
 
I don't entirely agree. Mexico was certainly a fiasco - no argument there. But the Crimean War halted Russian expansion toward the Mediterranean. At that point both France and the UK preferred a weak Turkish state controlling the straits to Russia.
I would add his bonds with the UK would prove rather important.
 
I'd say Edward III, King of France. No matter how much military success he might have had, when it's inflicted on your own people it still makes you the worst King of France. Especially since he started a war of France vs France which went on for over a hundred years.
By that standard Henry VI could be considered.
 
TBH I prefer the third Napoleon to the first: both of them ended up getting deposed, but Nappy III caused rather less bloodshed in the run-up.

Napoleon I, on the other hand, came quite close to victory, and unlike Napoleon III, or Britain for that matter, he actually passed reforms in the lands he conquered.
 
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