Creating his cycle about an incredible era that determined the future of beautiful France, Maurice Druon painstakingly worked in the National Archives, researching ancient documents. His grandiose historical series, The Damned Kings, concludes with the novels The Lily and the Lion and When the King Destroys France, tales of exorbitant ambition and inevitable collapse. Edward III, the son of Isabella of France, ascends to the throne of England and sends his mother's lover Roger to the gallows Mortimer, and she herself is removed from the royal court. But this is just the beginning: at the instigation of Robert Artois, expelled from France for forging documents, Edward III lays claim to the French throne - and so begins the Hundred Years' War. And in the final novel of the seven-volume saga, the garrulous Cardinal Elie Périgord talks about how the mighty have fallen: the war is depleting France, King John II the Good decided to give the English a decisive battle near Poitiers, and this becomes a disaster for both him and the country. In an atmosphere of palace intrigues, bloody massacres and coups, the descendants of Philip IV the Fair, once cursed by the Grand Master of the Templar Order, Jacques de Molay, who ascended to the stake, are destroying a previously powerful and rich country.