Geoffrey of Briel

Geoffrey was twice deprived of his barony, once for rebelling against his uncle, the Prince of Achaea William II of Villehardouin, and then for abandoning the Principality without leave in order to spend time with a mistress, the wife of one of his feudatories, in Italy.

The Barony was the third largest (after Akova and Patras) in the Principality of Achaea, counting 22 knights' fiefs and being responsible for keeping watch over the rebellious inhabitants of the mountainous Skorta area.

[6] The main source on Geoffrey's life are the various versions of the Chronicle of the Morea, which, in the words of the French medievalist Antoine Bon, "narrates with so much detail and indulgence" the "many and colourful adventures" of "a peculiar and charming figure, very representative of the generation of Frankish seigneurs born in Greece".

[9] According to the Aragonese version of the Chronicle he maintained a school of chivalry at the castle Karytaina, where the sons of the Greek nobles were trained as knights in the Western manner.

[15] The Frankish lords remained in captivity until 1261, when, following the recovery of Constantinople by the Nicaean Greeks, the Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos offered to release them in exchange for an oath of fealty to him, and the cession of a number of fortresses in the southeastern Morea.

[17] Despite this precarious situation, Geoffrey absented himself from the Morea, without William's permission, and spent the years 1263–1265 in Italy, ostensibly on a pilgrimage, but in reality living with the wife of one of his feudatories, John of Katavas.

Prince William entrusted a force of 50 horse and 200 crossbowmen to Geoffrey, who stationed them to keep watch over the defiles of Skorta, but he died of dysentery in late 1275.

A sympathetic but flawed hero, observed by his distant cousin, an admiring but increasingly disillusioned narrator, the baron of Karytaina is portrayed as a supreme exemplar of both the qualities and the limitations of Frankish chivalry.