Walter VI, Count of Brienne

Walter VI of Brienne (c. 1304 – 19 September 1356) was Count of Brienne, Conversano, and Lecce, and titular Duke of Athens.

Walter was the son of Walter V, Duke of Athens, and Jeanne de Châtillon (died 1354), the daughter of the Count of Porcien, Constable to King Philip IV of France.

As grandson of Hugh of Brienne (d. 1296), he was heir to a vast property all around the Mediterranean. After his father's death at the Battle of Halmyros on 15 March 1311, Walter became Count of Brienne, etc., and Duke of Athens. However, all of the Duchy except for Argos and Nauplia in the Principality of Achaea had been overrun by the Catalan Company, and Walter spent much of his life in an unsuccessful struggle to recover that inheritance of his grandmother's family. He spent most of his life in Italy and France and left Argos-Nauplia to be ruled by guardians.

The Duchy of Athens was not the first loss in his family: Walter's grandfather had been rejected from the succession of the kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus, and his great-great-grandfather had been Pretender of the throne of Sicily, as husband of the sister of William III of Sicily. They had barely regained the County of Lecce, and were still claiming the Principality of Taranto.

His mother Jeanne carried out a vigorous struggle against the Catalans during his minority, which, however, had little military effect but impoverished him. To strengthen his position, Walter engaged in a strategic marriage to Margaret, the niece of King Robert of Naples and daughter of Philip I of Taranto by Thamar Angelina Komnene, in December 1325. At this time, Florence requested King Robert's support in protecting Guelph interests in Italy, and elected his son, Charles, Duke of Calabria, as signore of Florence for a ten-year period (1326–36). Walter VI's almost-princely position in the Angevin court soon won him an appointment as Vicar for Charles of Calabria, an office that he only exercised for a few months in 1325.

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