Saint Louis, King of France from 1226 to 1270, first reigned under the tutelage of his mother, Blanche of Castile, which tackled the rebellion of the great vassals. In 1242, he triumphed over a league of lords from the South and West supported by Henry III of England. In 1259, the Treaty of Paris suspended the conflict between England and France. In his kingdom, Louis IX wished to see order and justice prevail. He went on a crusade in Egypt (1248) where he was made prisoner, and another to Tunis where he died of the plague in 1270. Saint Louis was canonised in 1297.
His stays at Vincennes were popularised by the memoirs of Joinville, one of the sovereign's most loyal companions, in his Vie du Roi completed in 1309 where Louis IX is depicted administering justice under an oak tree in the forest of Vincennes; there was probably no specific oak tree dedicated to that purpose, but rather a particular place in the forest near the royal residence.

This poet and chronicler was the treasurer of the Sainte-Chapelle of Vincennes. He probably inspired Rabelais for the character of Raminagrobis in Pantagruel.

He was the son of Henry II (1588-1646 – arrested during the Regency Council of 1616, he remained imprisoned at Vincennes for three years) and Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency (1594-1650).
At the age of 22, he defeated the Spanish and imperialists at Rocroi, then at Fribourg, Nördlingen and Lens. During Louis XIV's minority, Condé was on the side of Ann of Austria and Mazarin. His bad temper quickly exasperated his entourage. Mazarin had him imprisoned at Vincennes in 1650, but in the face of widespread protests, had him released in 1651. As soon as he was freed, he became head of the Fronde of the Princes and joined the Spanish in 1653. After the Peace of the Pyrenees, in 1659, he returned to France to serve Louis XIV.

He obtained the favour of King Henry II and was charged with inspecting the royal buildings and fortification work. He played an important role as a theorist and helped to modify the architect's function and social status.

French painter. In 1643, the chancellor Séguier sent his young protégé to Rome, to have him meet great European artists. During his three-year stay, he studied classical sculptors as well as ancient and modern painting. Back in Paris, he accumulated commissions, particularly for painted ceilings. Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finance, commissioned him to make sculptures and tapestries for his château of Vaux-le-Vicomte. On Mazarin's request, he joined André Le Nôtre and Louis Le Vau to form the famous team charged with transforming Louis XIII's hunting lodge in Versailles into a château. Named First Royal Painter, he became director of the Manufacture Royale des Gobelins in 1663 and life-long Chancellor of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Le Brun also took part in the decoration of the pavilions of the Château of Vincennes.

This French writer, nicknamed the "divine marquis" and famous for his pronounced taste for debauchery, spent thirty years in prison (including five years in the donjon of Vincennes) and died a captive in a Charenton hospice. In Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue (1791), Philosophy in the Boudoir (1795), The 120 days of Sodome (published only between 1931 and 1935), he alternates between orgy scenes and "moral dissertations".

Throughout the year 1819, as a young officer, Alfred de Vigny was stationed at Vincennes. Sixteen years later, this ex-military man turned famous writer and poet dedicated part of a novel to the Château of Vincennes and the memories he had from it. This was the second book of Servitude et Grandeur Militaire: La Veillée de Vincennes, a novel whose dénouement is based on the story of the explosion of the castle's powder depot (17 August 1819) which he witnessed.