François de Vendôme, vidame de Chartres

The Vidame was imprisoned in the Bastille after the Amboise conspiracy of 1560, in which he seems not to have been involved, and died days after the death of Francis II of France, which would probably have led to his release.

[2] Fictionalized versions of him appear in several works in various media, the first and most important of which is as a major character in La Princesse de Clèves, an anonymous French novel published in 1678, over a century after his death.

[4] Another story, told by Brantôme, has a Spanish nobleman travelling to France to challenge the Vidame to a duel, having heard he was the most "parfait chevalier" in Europe.

The duel took place in Italy, where the Vidame arrived with a hundred gentlemen, all wearing the same magnificent clothes, including a gold chain looped three times round their necks.

[5] According to Brantôme's account, he dazzled the English court with a banquet he hosted, where a sea-voyage was theatrically presented, including a rain storm of sweets (candies) falling from above.

This was a fashionable effect in continental courts, first recorded at the wedding of Cosimo I de' Medici in Florence in 1539, and mentioned in 1549 for the festivities as Mary of Hungary welcomed the future Philip II of Spain to the Netherlands at Binche Palace.

[7] He went as far as Inverness, where on a hunting trip with "the savage inhabitants of the area" (des sauvages habitants du pays), he joined them in eating the still "palpitating" flesh of their prey.

Vendôme again distinguished himself, and in 1557 he replaced a dead cousin as commander or "colonel-general" of the bandes Piedmontese, or French infantry of Piedmont,[9] a force who in 1545 had conducted the Massacre of Mérindol.

[14] The Vidame was now alienated from the dominant figures at court, and allied himself with Louis, Prince of Condé as the leader of the opposition to the Guises, which mainly came from the Huguenots.

[16] When Vendôme died without issue the title passed to Jean de Ferrières (1520–1586),[17] a leading Huguenot politician and military commander in the French Wars of Religion, who was forced to spend periods in exile in England.

[19] The action takes place between October 1558 and November 1559 at the court of Henry II of France, and the account of the Vidame largely agrees with that of Brantôme.