Diane de poitiers: Did you mean...?

Drawing of the Château de Chenonceau, Loire Valley, France c. 1570, by architect Jacques Androuet du Cerceau (1510-1585). This drawing shows the château as Diane de Poitiers, (1500-1566) favourite of Henry II of France (r. 1547-1559) would...

Religious practice in medieval Europe (c. 476-1500) was dominated and informed by the Catholic Church. The majority of the population was Christian, and "Christian" at this time meant "Catholic" as there was initially no other form of that...

Joan of Arc (Jeanne D'Arc, l. c. 1412-1431 CE) was a medieval peasant who, claiming to receive visions from God, turned the tide of the Hundred Years' War in favor of a French victory. She was famously martyrd for standing by her claim of...

William the Conqueror (c. 1027-1087), also known as William, Duke of Normandy, led the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 when he defeated and killed his rival Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. Crowned King William I of England...

René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French mathematician, natural scientist, and philosopher, best known by the phrase 'Cogito ergo sum' ('I think therefore I am'). He published works on optics, coordinate geometry, physiology, and cosmology...

The Visigoths were the western tribe of the Goths (a Germanic people) who settled west of the Black Sea sometime in the 3rd century CE. According to the scholar Herwig Wolfram, the Roman writer Cassiodorus (c. 485-585 CE) coined the term...

The Crusader States (aka the Latin East or Outremer) were created after the First Crusade (1095-1102) in order to keep hold of the territorial gains made by Christian armies in the Middle East. The four small states were the Kingdom of Jerusalem...

Clovis I (or Chlodovech, 466-511/513 CE), king of the Franks, is considered the founding father of the Merovingian Dynasty, which would continue for over 200 years. Clovis became king at the age of 15, and by the time of his death 30 years...

Henry II of England ruled from 1154 to 1189 CE. He gained the throne by negotiation with his predecessor King Stephen of England (r. 1135-1154 CE) following the civil war that had raged between that monarch and Henry's mother Empress Matilda...

Henry V of England ruled as king from 1413 to 1422. Succeeding his father Henry IV of England (r. 1399-1413), Prince Henry established himself as a fine military leader in battles against English and Welsh rebels in the first decade of the...