Examines the history of fourteenthcentury Europe as background to the life of Enguerrand de Coucy VII, one of the most prominent French knights of that time.

"I am the Sire de Coucy": the dynasty -- Born to woe: the century -- Youth and chivalry -- War -- "This is the end of the world": the black death -- The Battle of Poitiers -- Decapitated France: the bourgeois rising and the Jacquerie -- Hostage in England -- Enguerrand and Isabella -- Sons of iniquity -- The gilded shroud -- Double allegiance -- Coucy's war -- England's turmoil -- The emperor in Paris -- The papal schism -- Coucy's rise -- The worms of the earth against the lions -- The lure of Italy -- A second Norman conquest -- The fiction cracks -- The siege of Barbary -- In a dark wood -- Danse macabre -- Lost opportunity -- Nicopolis -- Hung be the heavens with black.