This volume covers the early reigns of the Valois dynasty, a period destined to be a dark time in French history. The brutal wars with England, the nobility's wars of personal ambition, the savagery of the Jacquerie rebellion, famine, and the Black Death will bring France almost to its knees. By the end of this narrative, the King of France has become incapacitated by bouts of madness, Paris and half the provinces owe allegiance to a rival English monarch, and the idea of French nationhood survives only as a flickering light in the imagination of a frightened little girl living in the isolated village of Domremy.