Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Siege of Paris: Charles the Fat Boss Fight and Choice Guide

King Charles the Fat ends up being the final boss fight of the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Siege of Paris DLC, now completely insane and looking for vengeance against Eivor. However, with Queen Richardis asking you to spare him, we’ll explain here how to beat the Charles the Fat final boss fight, whether you should kill him, spare him, and how exactly you can solve the puzzle of how to end the fight non-lethally.

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Charles the Fat Boss Fight and Choice Explained in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Siege of Paris DLC

To beat Charles the Fat final boss fight in the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Siege of Paris DLC, players first have to decide whether they want to kill King Charles, or spare him like Richardis asked. Both methods start off the same way, but there’s extra steps involved to keeping him alive. We’ll take you through both methods below, as Charles is a bit more of a puzzle than the average boss.

How to Kill Charles the Fat

Charles is basically indestructible when you fight him, as his combination of chainmail and berserker madness have left him unable to realise that he’s being hurt. However, you’ve been given specific clues as to what it is that can snap him out of it - fire, his major phobia. And with lit braziers all around the arena, this gives you a major advantage. Here’s how to kill the king.

1. Charles cannot take meaningful damage while he has stamina remaining. Damaging him reduces stamina, and using arrows on his weak points takes away a lot of it.
2. Once his stamina is depleted, using a finisher on him will instead push him towards the nearest brazier. If he’s not close enough, he only staggers part of the way, then gets his stamina back. Make sure you empty his stamina bar within a few steps of the fire to ensure a clean kick into the flames.
3. If successful, he’ll take major damage, then restore his stamina, forcing you to repeat the process. Repeat until he loses all his health for a lethal victory.
4. At times, Charles will pick up one of the water pots around the edge of the arena and throw them at the braziers to extinguish them. However, the camera helpfully tracks them as they arc through the air, and if you’re fast, you can destroy them with an arrow before they land.
5. If the braziers are extinguished, it’s very easy to light them - simply equip a torch from the radial menu and hit them with a melee attack.

Charles’ attacks are wide swings, often unblockable, but with lots of telegraphing for what’s coming. He can’t be grappled or knocked down, so you’ll be spending most of the fight playing defensively until you can set up a contextual fire attack.

How to Beat Charles Without Killing Him (Non-Lethal)

If you want to defeat Charles non-lethally, you still need to follow the above steps, but with some additional steps along the way. The big thing to know is that the more damaged Charles is, the longer he’ll remain in the stunned state when all his stamina is drained. So while he’ll only be briefly staggered on full health, once you’ve used the braziers to burn half his head off, reducing his stamina will leave him standing dazed in place for up to twenty seconds. With that in mind, here’s what to do.

1. Follow the above steps with the brazier until Charles has lost at least half his health, and ideally more than that (the weaker he is, the easier this’ll be).
2. Head to the closed portcullis at the opposite end of the room. On its left side is a lever. Use it when you have a moment to open the portcullis and reveal a new room with a huge picture of Richardis on the wall.
3. Enter, and Charles will get angry, following you inside.
4. Here you have to reduce Charles’ stamina again, stunning him. Immediately run back to the lever and pull it (this takes a while) to lower the portcullis again.
5. If he’s stunned for long enough, you’ll be able to trap him inside as a result, immediately ending the fight. If not, you’ll need to repeat the process, either acting faster or lowering his health more to give yourself a wider window of opportunity.

Should You Kill or Spare Charles the Fat?

Whether you should beat the Charles the Fat fight lethally or non-lethally is really up to you, as there aren’t really any long-term distinctions to impact the game and the way you play - it’s just a matter of who you agree with and what you think is the right thing to do. Nonetheless, we’ve laid out both outcomes below, with spoiler warnings of course.

Spare Charles

If you choose just to trap Charles, there are several consequences in the cutscenes that immediately follow.

• Richardis attends to and placates him inside the room he’s trapped in. She thanks Eivor for being merciful, and says she’s going to take Charles away to some distant, quiet place and just care for him, while also training Bernard to take the throne in the near future.
• Count Odo is pretty angry that Charles is still alive, but less so if you never promised to kill him in the first place. Odo leaves to tend to Francia, but it’s unclear if he’s going to leave the Norse alone and just repair Paris, or if his ambitions are greater than that.
• Toka is just happy the fighting is over, Charles is dealt with and Odo, for the time being at least, is behaving himself. Either way, England and Ravensthorpe should be safe from the threat.

Kill Charles

If you choose to kill Charles, either for justice, revenge or mercy, the following changes occur in the cutscenes afterwards.

• Queen Richardis is devastated at Charles’ death, accusing Eivor of murder and of letting her down. With Charles dead and Bernard still young and in hiding, it seems unlikely that this line of succession will continue.
• Count Odo is delighted that you did what he wanted, considering it better that a dangerous maniac has been dealt with. He has a clean shot at the throne now, but is also happy to make peace with the Elgring clan and the Norse for getting rid of Charles once and for all.
• Toka is still happy with the resolution of things, but the lesson learned is slightly different. Whereas before she seems to learn the value of mercy and sticking to your ideals, in this ending she seems to learn a lesson of pragmatism from what Eivor did. Either way, the Raven Clan and Elgring Clan will be allies going forward.

Looking for more tips on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s French holidays? Find out what happens if you kill or spare Sigfred, or check out the best way to kill Bishop Engelwin here!