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The tragicomic pen of Jean Teulé strikes again. His subject this time – Charles IX, the French king notorious for the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 in which thousands of Huguenots were brutally murdered.

Teulé begins his latest novel portraying Charly 9, 22 years old, as a mere puppet who is pressured to give in to his mother Catherine de Médicis’s wishes to go ahead with the massacre. The guilt over these murders will lead to Charly’s rapid descent into madness which is at the heart of this darkly entertaining tale.

Charly loves to hunts so when winter sets in, he has animals brought into the palace so that he could hunt in the warmth.

The New Year traditionally began on April 1 and was considered a Spring holiday when people would dance half naked. Charly’s decision to begin the New Year on January 1 leads to the deaths of many who continued to celebrate without clothing.

He even believes that he could simply replenish the Kingdom’s treasures by producing false money, with his head engraved on each coin.

These are just some of the examples of Charly’s madness, at times both absurd and deadly, that will quickly lead to his own death just two years after the massacre.