IN THIS CASE study, I examined the evolution of Jeanne's and Charles's fama on three levels to show how reputation was constructed in different written contexts, and how historians can understand these texts as sources for reputation. The first level distinguished three major narrative phases: the papal inquiry into Charles's canonization, the French chivalric chronicles, and the Breton dynastic histories. The second level played out in the revisions produced by the same author, their continuators, or, for the canonization, by reworking spoken testimony into official record. The third level comprised the detailed variations between individual witnesses (human or manuscript). This multilayered heterogeneity encourages us to think about the norms of power, gender, and reputation as arguments rather than benchmarks, questions rather than answers.

At the first level, I showed how different aims and audiences meant prioritizing specific reputational traits, alongside the relative distribution of leadership within an aristocratic partnership. The proponents of Charles's canonization confronted the complications of lordship during a civil war by establishing his martial masculinity through less violent, even anti-knightly means. Jeanne, although not the focus of that inquiry, provided a useful reference point for the normal parameters of seigneurial authority and spousal responsibilities. Conversely, the chivalric chroniclers commended Jeanne's and Charles's exemplary courtliness and conduct of warfare, incorporating both princes into the paradigm of the martial nobility for whom they wrote. The ducal partnership was built out of their distinct but complementary identities and relationships, and the ability to mutually delegate power to each other. Finally, the Montfortist writers emphasized greater distinctions in the balance of responsibility, in order to mitigate the risks of female succession in light of the challenges facing their ducal patrons. They refrained, however, from developing a particularly negative view of Jeanne's leadership because she was easier to integrate within the all-important dynastic fold.

The developments from version to version within each phase clarified how even written reputations took part in an ongoing debate.