The Treaty of Troyes recognized Henry VI as heir to the French throne before Joan of Arc’s campaigns.
Signed in 1420, the treaty followed English victories during the Hundred Years’ War and the political crisis surrounding the French king Charles VI. It arranged the marriage of Henry V of England to Catherine of Valois and declared Henry the successor to the French crown, bypassing Charles VI’s son, the dauphin Charles.
The agreement became a major foundation of the English-Burgundian claim that Joan opposed. Her support for Charles VII challenged the treaty’s political settlement, especially after the French victories that enabled Charles’s coronation at Reims in 1429.
The treaty did not end the conflict permanently. Henry V and Charles VI both died in 1422, leaving the infant Henry VI as the English claimant and Charles VII as the Valois claimant. The Treaty of Arras in 1435 later weakened the English position by reconciling Burgundy with Charles VII.