The elder son, Louis III, succeeded to the crown of Sicily and the Duchy of Anjou; René then became Count of Guise.

[4][5] René, then only ten, was to be brought up in Lorraine under the guardianship of Charles II and Louis, cardinal of Bar,[6] both of whom were attached to the Burgundian party, but he retained the right to bear the arms of Anjou.

[7] The Duchess Isabella effected a truce with Antoine, but the duke remained a prisoner of the Burgundians until April 1432, when he recovered his liberty on parole on yielding up as hostages his two sons, John and Louis.

The marriage of Marie of Bourbon, niece of Philip of Burgundy, with John, Duke of Calabria, René's eldest son, cemented peace between the two families.

[4][11] René took part in the negotiations with the English at Tours in 1444, and peace was consolidated by the marriage of his younger daughter, Margaret, with Henry VI of England at Nancy.

René had the confidence of Charles VII, and is said to have initiated the reduction of the men-at-arms set on foot by the king, with whose military operations against the English he was closely associated.

King Louis XI seized Anjou and Bar, and two years later sought to compel René to exchange the two duchies for a pension.

The offer was rejected, but further negotiations assured the lapse to the crown of the duchy of Anjou and the annexation of Provence was only postponed until the death of the Count of Le Maine.

[19] He founded an order of chivalry, the Ordre du Croissant, which preceded the royal foundation of St Michael but did not survive René.

[20] The King of Sicily's fame as an amateur painter[a] formerly led to the optimistic attribution to him of many paintings in Anjou and Provence, in many cases simply because they bore his arms.

[citation needed] Two of the most famous works formerly attributed to René are the triptych of the Burning Bush of Nicolas Froment of Avignon in Aix Cathedral, showing portraits of René and his second wife, Jeanne de Laval, and two illuminated Book of Hours in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the British Library.

Among the men of letters attached to his court was Antoine de la Sale, whom he made tutor to his son John.

René is sometimes credited with the pastoral poem "Regnault and Jeanneton",[b] but this was more likely a gift to the king honoring his marriage to Jeanne de Laval.

The description given in the book is different from that of the pas d'armes held at Razilly and Saumur; conspicuously absent are the allegorical and chivalresque ornamentations that were in vogue at the time.

The imaginary scene of his honeymoon was later depicted by the Pre-Raphaelite painters Ford Madox Brown, Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

René and his Order of the Crescent were adopted as "historical founders" by the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity in 1912, as exemplars of Christian chivalry and charity.

The theme used throughout this piece was alleged to have been written by René (Guilmant's source was Alphonse Pellet, organist at Nîmes Cathedral).

René frequently changed his coat of arms, which represented his numerous and fluctuating claims to titles, both actual and nominal.