The English prose romance Melusine (c. 1500) is, in many respects, a close translation of Jean d’Arras's 1393 French work. And yet, the late Middle English text (hereafter Melusine) inevitably reflects its differing context of production. D’Arras's text (hereafter D’Arras) was produced during the Hundred Years’ War, when the fortress of Lusignan was under threat. It has long been agreed that one of d’Arras's goals in writing the romance was to secure Jean de Berry's hold over the fortress, and that one of his key strategies was to script the rise of the House of Lusignan, but also its fall, thereby making way for his illustrious patron. In the romance, the eponymous heroine establishes the family seat by building the fortress of Lusignan, and then expands its holdings into the surrounding Poitevin countryside. In the next generation, four Lusignan sons marry heiresses of distant lands – Cyprus and Cilician Armenia in the eastern Mediterranean, and Luxembourg and Bohemia in continental Europe – thereby creating an imaginary geopolitical expanse of a unified and defended Christendom that reconfigures the shape and distribution of power in Europe and secures the stronghold of Lusignan as its core. While political alliances were commonly effected through high-level marriages in this period, the romance foregrounds the participants’ negotiation of intimate relationships as key to the success of empire. D’Arras privileges Cilician Armenia in this endeavour, narrating the seamless rise of the Lusignan house in the tale of Florie and Guyon, and its ultimate demise in the Sparrowhawk Castle Epilogue. Melusine, however, undercuts this assurance, making focused changes to the interpersonal relationships in these episodes that weaken claims to empire. Melusine was produced approximately one hundred years after D’Arras, amid the political instability and financial exhaustion that resulted from long years of war, including the Wars of the Roses and their bitter domestic rivalries. Literature of the period reflects these conditions in increased tropes of treason and betrayal. Within such a context, extending the fractures in family relations takes on a new significance. This chapter argues that these changes rupture the foundation of empire, extending the blame for its fall from one man, traditionally read as the last reigning Lusignan king of Cilician Armenia, onto a whole lineage.

Unlike D’Arras, with its precise internal dating and description of the conditions under which it was produced, the geographical, temporal, and authorial context of production of Melusine is not known.