Before the allegorical dream narrative that comprises most of the Livre du Cœur d'Amour épris (Book of the Love-Smitten Heart) (1457), René d'Anjou, Duke of the Angevine territories and King of Sicily, addresses a prose complaint to his nephew and cousin, Jean de Bourbon. Hopelessly in love with a woman he calls Sweet Mercy (Douce Merci), who does not appear to reciprocate the sentiment, René cannot decide whether to blame Fortune, Love, or his own destiny for the torment that has befallen his forlorn heart: “pource que l'un des trois si m'a si griefment mis en soulcy et tourment que ne le sauroye dire, ne lequel au vray prendre pour en baillier la charge ne lui en donner la coulpe” [for one of the three has so grievously cast me into affliction and torment, and, truly, I do not know which to charge with the crime or the guilt]. Describing the genesis of this love to Jean, René explains that one day Fortune brought him unknowingly to an unnamed beautiful and noble lady, Love shot an arrow from her gaze into his heart, and now destiny will not allow his memory any repose or respite. In agony and thinking only of her, he is unable to live fully healed of this amorous wound and yet at the same time cannot die, held in perpetual limbo between suffering and death.

The book he has begun, René declares, arises from this conflicted state of being and that here, in the outpouring of unresolved emotions, he hopes his addressee will read and offer some consolation to his tortured situation. In order to explain the initial encounter with Sweet Mercy as if it were a real-life event, René creates for himself a literary counterpart who exists within and frames the fantastical landscape of the text. Casting an autobiographical shadow over the entire work, this alter-ego becomes the catalyst for a quest that, René hopes, will allow him to explore the cruel desire that has struck him so unexpectedly.