In 1559, René de Challant seemed to be at the height of his powers. The un-questioned leader of the most powerful magnate family in the Valle d’Aosta, he held fiefs not only throughout the valley, but also in the transalpine Sabaudian lands (in what is, today, western Switzerland), in the duchy of Lorraine, and in the marquisate of Monferrato. As Marshal of Savoie, he was the chief military commander for the House of Savoy and swore allegiance to that Duke for most of his lands. The Challant family had appeared in the Valle d’Aosta by the twelfth century (when the valley accepted Sabaudian overlordship) and began acquiring fiefs and offices. François de Challant received the comital title in the fifteenth century but had no direct male heirs, so the head of another branch of the family, Jacques de Challant-Aymavilles, acquired his titles. Jacques's great-grandson René reaped the benefits, also inheriting from his mother the lordship of Valangin and the barony of Beaufremont north of the Alps. He was a transregional noble with strong service ties to a dynasty whose states themselves spanned the Alps, embodying in his person and lands an Italian Renaissance that was itself spatially dispersed.

The force of René's influence might be one reason why the Duke of Savoy assigned him to a command that was naturally exercised from Savoie, across the Alps from his power center in the valley.