In Fiction
Charles IX is a supporting character in Alexandre Dumas' historical novel Queen Margot, which focuses on the marriage between Henry of Navarre and Margaret of Valois. The book depicts Charles as both a cold-hearted king who takes pleasure in the hunt, and a lonely and vulnerable man, influenced in politics by his relatives and allies. In this work of fiction, he is a frail and sickly ruler, and dies after reading a book poisoned with arsenic, which his mother intended for Henry of Navarre.
He has a small role in the Doctor Who story "The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve", portrayed by Barry Justice. The story portrays him as a kindly but weak-willed king who is dominated by his mother and persuaded by her to authorise the massacre despite his friendship with de Coligny.
Read more about this topic: Charles IX Of France
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)