[1]: 311  In his youth he was friends with Henry III, the future king, and at the behest of Jacques, Duke of Nemours tried to persuade the young prince to run away with him in 1561 to join the arch-Catholic faction, much to the fury of his father and uncle.

[1]: 186  When he was 12 years old, his father François was assassinated and Henri thus inherited the Duke's titles of the Governor of Champagne and Grand Maître de France in 1563.

[1]: 173  When in 1566 the crown forced Charles at Moulins to make the kiss of peace with Coligny to end their feud, Guise refused to attend.

[1]: 187 No longer welcome at court, he and his brother Charles, Duke of Mayenne decided to crusade against the Ottoman Empire in Hungary, serving under Alfonso II d'Este, with a retinue of 350 men.

[1]: 187  In September 1568 he reached his majority, just as the Guise returned to the centre of French politics with his uncle's readmission to the Privy Council.

[4] Shortly after the wedding, Coligny, who had made a rare visit to the capital for the occasion, was shot in the shoulder in an attempted assassination.

[7] With a charismatic and brilliant public reputation, he rose to heroic stature among the militant Catholic population of France as an opponent of the Huguenots.

Guise sent his cousin, Charles, Duke of Aumale, to lead a rising in Picardy (which could also support the retreat of the Spanish Armada).

The deed aroused such outrage among the remaining relatives and allies of Guise that Henry was forced to take refuge with the king of Navarre.

John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee wrote The Duke of Guise (1683),[12] based on events during the reign of Henry III.

Ken Follett's 2017 novel A Column of Fire features Henri, Duke of Guise as a prominent character, and explores his involvement with the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.