Charles II, Duke of Lorraine

Who was Charles II, Duke of Lorraine?

Charles II, called the Bold was the Duke of Lorraine from 1390 to his death and Constable of France from 1418 to 1425. Charles was the elder son of John I, Duke of Lorraine, and Sophie, daughter of Eberhard II, Count of Württemberg.

He is called Charles II because of a previous Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine, despite the fact that his own duchy was that of Upper Lorraine; Lower Lorraine being subsumed in Brabant by his time.

During his youth, he had been close to Philip II, Duke of Burgundy, they having been comrades in arms on several occasions. This proximity to Burgundy was largely a result of his father's moving away from the French court, the court to which the Lorrainer dukes had neared in the past century and a half as they withdrew from the Holy Roman Empire, within which their duchy was still technically a vassal state. Charles was defiant of Louis I, Duke of Orléans, who had supported the citizens of Neufchâteau against his father and the Emperor Wenceslaus when the latter was accused by his subjects of weakness. Wenceslaus was deposed in 1400 and replaced by Rupert III, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Charles' father-in-law.