Count Louis de la Croix was a knight errant in his youth, part of a close band with Vladimir Crespi, Ramon du Lac and Milton de Peyrac-Peyran. The ducal couple once entrusted them with escorting the young Sylvia Anna, said to be cursed by the Black Sun, out of Toussaint. They carried out the order cruelly. Each humiliated her in his own way, Louis by mocking her, and they abandoned the girl in the cold with nothing, hoping she would die.

Later, Louis decided that a modern knight should embrace enterprise as a sixth chivalric virtue. He made a fortune in the grain trade with a mill inherited from his mother, earning the nickname “Sir de la Stingy” from Palmerin de Launfal.

In Blood and Wine

Louis befriended a quiet stranger he met at the bootblack’s stand in Beauclair: Dettlaff. One day in 1275, the two went to inspect his mill, where Dettlaff killed him, stuffed a purse of florens down his throat as a mockery of the virtue of generosity, and threw his remains in the river. Geralt uncovers the scene in Amidst the Mill’s Grist, and his death is part of the investigation in La Cage au Fou and Capture the Castle.