What began as a feud between factions of the royal family erupted into open warfare as a result of Louis's death.

Catherine's father also planned to leave them his claim to the Crown of Naples and the County of Provence, which were then held by his ailing and childless cousin Joanna I.

Louis had the initial advantage over John, being the brother rather than the first cousin of the king, but his reputation as a womanizer and the rumour of an affair with Queen Isabeau made him extremely unpopular.

In the following years, the children of Charles VI were successively kidnapped and recovered by both parties, until John the Fearless was appointed by royal decree as guardian of the Dauphin Louis and regent of France.

Louis did not give up and made every effort to sabotage John's rule, including squandering the money raised for the siege of Calais, then occupied by the English.

Louis was stabbed while mounting his horse by fifteen masked criminals led by Raoulet d'Anquetonville, a servant of the Duke of Burgundy.

Rather than deny it, John had the scholar Jean Petit of the Sorbonne deliver a peroration justifying the murder as tyrannicide.

Louis's murder sparked a bloody feud and civil war between Burgundy and the French royal family which divided France for the next twenty-eight years, ending with the Treaty of Arras in 1435.