His elder sister Anne acted as regent jointly with her husband Peter II, Duke of Bourbon until 1491, when the young king turned 21 years of age.

Upon his marriage, Charles became administrator of Brittany and established a personal union that enabled France to avoid total encirclement by Habsburg territories.

To secure his rights to the Neapolitan throne that René of Anjou had left to his father, Charles made a series of concessions to neighbouring monarchs and, due to his revolutionary artillery, conquered the Italian Peninsula without much opposition.

Charles died in 1498 after supposedly striking his head accidentally on the lintel of a door at the Château d'Amboise, his place of birth, but that has been subject to re-analysis.

Since he had no male heir, he was succeeded by his second cousin once removed and brother-in-law at the time, Louis XII, from the Orléans cadet branch of the House of Valois.

Charles was born at the Château d'Amboise in France, the only surviving son of King Louis XI by his second wife Charlotte of Savoy.

[4] The marriage was arranged by Louis XI, Maximilian, and the Estates of the Low Countries as part of the 1482 Peace of Arras between France and the Duchy of Burgundy.

The regent Anne of France and her husband Peter refused to countenance such a marriage, however, since it would place Maximilian and his family, the Habsburgs, on two French borders.

The French army invaded Brittany, taking advantage of the preoccupation of Maximilian and his father, Emperor Frederick III, with the disputed succession to Mathias Corvinus, King of Hungary.

Although the cancellation of her betrothal meant that she by rights should have been returned to her family, Charles did not initially do so, intending to marry her usefully elsewhere in France.

Around the king there was a circle of court poets, the most memorable being the Italian humanist Publio Fausto Andrelini from Forlì, who spread Renaissance humanism in France.

During a pilgrimage to pay respects to his father's remains, Charles observed Mont Aiguille and ordered Antoine de Ville to ascend to the summit in an early technical alpine climb, later alluded to by Rabelais.

The English monarch Henry VII had forced Charles to abandon his support for the pretender Perkin Warbeck by despatching an expedition which laid siege to Boulogne.

The famous friar Savonarola believed that King Charles VIII was God's tool to purify the corruption of Florence.

The formation of the League of Venice, which included the northern Italian states of Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Venice, the Duchy of Mantua, and the Republic of Florence in addition to the Kingdom of Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Naples, appeared to have trapped Charles in southern Italy and blocked his return to France.

Meanwhile, Charles' remaining garrisons in Naples were quickly subdued by Aragonese forces sent by Ferdinand II of Aragon, ally of Alfonso on 6–7 July 1495.

In order to stymie these efforts, Louis XII had his 24-year childless marriage to Charles's sister, Joan, annulled and married Anne.

[31] In the 2017 German-Austrian historical drama Maximilian, a young Charles when he was Dauphin is portrayed by French actor Max Baissette de Malglaive.