The Accursed Kings Reading Order: Where to Start
Maurice Druon's seven-novel sequence, translated from the French, covers the collapse of the Capetian dynasty from the burning of the Templars in 1314 to the eve of the Hundred Years War. George R. R. Martin called it the original Game of Thrones, and the comparison holds: it is dynastic, ruthless and short on heroes. Publication order is chronological order, so the sequence is straightforward — the only thing worth knowing in advance is that the seventh book was written two decades after the sixth and reads differently.
Start here
BeginnerMeet the curse that gives the series its name and the court it destroys, in the volume that sets every later conflict in motion.
▸ Study plan for this stage
Pace: 1-2 weeks. The Iron King is short — around 300 pages — and moves fast; 40-50 pages a day is comfortable. The only friction in the whole sequence is front-loaded here: a large cast of French nobles with similar names and multiple titles each. Give the first fifty pages your full attention and the res
- The curse itself: Jacques de Molay, burned in 1314, calls Philip the Fair, Pope Clement and Nogaret to God's judgement within the year, and damns the Capetian line to the thirteenth generation — the frame for everything that follows
- The Tour de Nesle affair, which destroys three royal marriages at once and creates the succession problem the next four books are about
- Druon's method: a historian's material handled as procedural politics, with murder treated as an administrative option and no authorial moralising
- The Lombard bankers and the Italian money that quietly finances every French crisis in the sequence
- Robert of Artois and his aunt Mahaut — the inheritance feud that runs across all seven books and outlives most of the kings
- Reading French nobles by title as well as name: the same person is Artois, Robert, and the Count, often in one paragraph
- Why Martin's 'the original Game of Thrones' comparison holds — dynastic, amoral, and structurally indifferent to who the protagonist is
- What are the three specific charges the curse names, and how quickly does history oblige?
- Who benefits from the Tour de Nesle scandal, and who arranged for it to surface?
- What is the Artois inheritance dispute actually about, and why can it never be settled?
- How does Druon signal that a character is doomed without ever telling you so?
- What does the French crown owe the Lombards, and how does that debt shape policy?
- Sketch the Capetian family tree as you read — three brothers, their wives, and their children. Twenty minutes here saves confusion across six more books.
- Keep a one-line card for Robert of Artois and one for Mahaut. They are the spine of the series and you will want the running tally.
- Note every death and mark whether it is natural, political or ambiguous. Druon rarely commits, and the ambiguity is deliberate.
- Read the Templar execution scene twice, then look up the actual dates of the three deaths that follow.
Next up: With the king dead and three royal marriages destroyed, the throne passes to sons who cannot hold it, and the next three books are the scramble that follows.
Philip the Fair burns the Templar Grand Master, who curses his line to the thirteenth generation, and the Tour de Nesle adultery scandal takes down three royal marriages in a season. Everything in the next six books traces back to these two events, and the book is fast, short and translated cleanly.
The succession crisis
IntermediateFollow the three quick reigns that follow, and see how an inheritance dispute becomes a constitutional principle.
▸ Study plan for this stage
Pace: 5-6 weeks for the three. Each is around 250-300 pages and they read as one continuous movement — The Strangled Queen picks up almost mid-scene from The Iron King, so do not leave a gap after the first book. 40 pages a day is fine; these are the fastest-moving volumes in the sequence.
- Louis X's remarriage problem and its solution — the sequence's clearest statement that in this world an obstacle is a person and a person can be removed
- The regency of Philippe of Poitiers and the manoeuvring around an unborn heir, which is where Druon's political procedural instincts are sharpest
- John I, the infant king who reigns for five days, and the substitution plot Druon builds on the historical rumour
- The exclusion of women from the French succession, improvised here as an expedient and later hardened into principle — this is the hinge of the whole sequence
- That ruling is exactly what gives Edward III of England his pretext two books later; the Hundred Years War starts as a legal argument made for short-term convenience
- Mahaut of Artois as the most effective political operator in the books, and the fact that Druon lets her be that without softening her
- How a dynasty with three adult sons runs out of kings in twelve years
- What is the legal reasoning used to exclude Jeanne from the throne, and does anyone in the book believe it?
- Who kills Louis X's queen, on whose instruction, and how is responsibility distributed so that nobody carries it?
- What happens to the infant John I in Druon's telling, and how does he keep it plausible?
- By The Royal Succession, has the curse become a supernatural claim or a description of ordinary dynastic collapse?
- Which is the more dangerous character, Robert or Mahaut, and how does Druon keep the answer moving?
- Write out the succession argument of The Royal Succession as if you were drafting the ruling. Doing it in your own words is what makes book five land.
- Track how many characters die between books two and four, and how many of those deaths change the throne.
- Mark the point where the exclusion of women stops being an expedient and starts being described as law.
- Keep updating the family tree from stage one; three reigns pass in these volumes.
Next up: The succession rule improvised in these books becomes England's legal pretext, and the story moves across the Channel to collect on it.
Louis X needs to remarry and his imprisoned wife is in the way. Picks up immediately from The Iron King and shows Druon's method: politics resolved by murder, described without moralising.
Louis's brief reign and the manoeuvring around an unborn heir. Robert of Artois and the Countess Mahaut, the sequence's two best characters, take the foreground.
The crisis that produces the exclusion of women from the French throne — the ruling that will later give the English kings their pretext. This is the hinge of the whole sequence.
Toward the Hundred Years War
IntermediateWatch the dynastic quarrel widen into the conflict between France and England that the series exists to explain.
▸ Study plan for this stage
Pace: 4-5 weeks for the two. The She-Wolf of France shifts the setting to England and introduces a second court, so expect a short re-orientation; The Lily and the Lion is the longest and most satisfying volume and repays reading in bigger sittings. Druon wrote the sixth book as the ending, so treat finis
- Isabella of France as the character the sequence has been quietly building toward — daughter of Philip the Fair, queen of England, and the person who exposes the Tour de Nesle in book one
- Her invasion with Mortimer and the deposition of Edward II, handled by Druon as politics rather than melodrama
- Edward III's claim to the French throne through his mother, which is precisely the descent the French ruling in book four denied
- Robert of Artois's forged charters — his one irreversible mistake, and the collapse of the feud that has run since book one
- Robert's defection to England and his role in urging Edward toward war, which closes the sequence's circle: the curse's last work is done by a Frenchman
- How Druon converts a private inheritance quarrel into a hundred-year international war without ever changing register
- The sixth book as the intended conclusion — the curse's thirteen generations, the dynasty gone, the war beginning
- How does Edward III's claim depend on the exact ruling made in The Royal Succession?
- What does Isabella want, and at what point does the book stop letting you sympathise with her?
- Why do the forged charters destroy Robert when so many worse acts in the series go unpunished?
- Does the sequence treat the Templar curse as real, and does the final page commit either way?
- What has actually caused the Hundred Years War, by Druon's account — law, money, or one man's grudge?
- Diagram Edward III's descent from Philip the Fair and set it against the exclusion argument you wrote out in the previous stage.
- List everything Robert of Artois has done across six books, then decide whether his fall is justice or accident.
- After the last page of The Lily and the Lion, check the real dates of Crécy and Poitiers — they are just past the edge of the story, which is the effect Druon wants.
- Stop here if you want the series as Druon originally shaped it. The next stage is genuinely an appendix.
Next up: The series is complete at this point; what follows was written two decades later and is a different kind of book entirely.
Isabella of France, married to Edward II, returns to England with Mortimer to depose her husband. The action moves across the Channel and the English claim to the French crown takes shape.
Robert of Artois's forged charters, his exile, and his defection to Edward III. Druon intended this as the end, and it delivers the war the title of the sequence has been promising.
The late seventh book
IntermediateRead the volume Druon added long afterwards, knowing that it is a different kind of book.
▸ Study plan for this stage
Pace: 3-4 weeks, and genuinely optional. The King Without a Kingdom is a single sustained monologue with almost no scene-level drama, so the reading experience is nothing like the previous six — 20-25 pages a day, and give yourself permission to put it down. Read it only after a gap, not immediately after
- The form: one long spoken monologue by Cardinal Périgord on the road to meet John II, addressing a listener who never replies
- Druon wrote it roughly twenty years after book six, and the change in style is generational, not accidental
- It covers Crécy and Poitiers — the war the sixth book only promised — but reports rather than dramatises them
- A narrator who is a diplomat and self-justifier, which makes this the only volume in the series with an unreliable voice
- Why the sequence loses nothing by ending at book six: the curse's arc is closed, and this is a coda about the war's early disasters
- The digressive, gossiping cardinal as Druon's late experiment in historical voice, closer to a memoir than to the procedural of the earlier books
- What does the monologue form let Druon do that the earlier third-person books could not?
- How reliable is the cardinal, and where does he most obviously flatter himself?
- Does the account of Poitiers gain or lose from being reported rather than shown?
- Is this a seventh Accursed Kings novel or a separate book wearing the series' name?
- Having read it, would you now tell a new reader to stop at six?
- Read the first twenty pages and decide immediately whether the voice works for you; it does not change.
- Note every point where the cardinal excuses his own conduct, then reconstruct what probably happened.
- Compare his account of a battle with a short factual summary of Poitiers and mark the omissions.
Next up: This is the end of the path — with the coda read, you have all seven volumes and the sequence has nowhere further to go.
Written two decades after the sixth novel and narrated as a single long monologue by a cardinal travelling to meet John II, covering Crécy and Poitiers. Formally unlike everything before it, and genuinely optional — the sequence is complete without it, so treat this as an appendix rather than a finale.
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