After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Final Days of Joan of Arc: Trial & Execution

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

(Part 2/2) Joan of Arc, mystic leader of a French army, was captured and sold to the English who tried her as a witch. What do the final days of this iconic figure tell us? With so much myth swirling around her, how can we get at the real Joan d'Arc?Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Edited by Tomos Delargy. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hi, we're your hosts, Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like after dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. No one could have foreseen the path Joan of Arc's life had taken up to this point. Well, perhaps only visionaries like Joan herself, of course. From growing up as a peasant in the rural setting of Domremy, to convincing the king of her divine powers with such certainty that he entrusted her with his army at the

height of a civil war. An army that she'd led fearlessly, a teenage girl dressed in men's armour clutching victory from the jaws of defeat at the siege of Orlion. But her good fortune would not hold. Joan, in the eyes of her enemies, and there were many, had taken things too far. Now, so many of the very voices that lifted her to greatness are plotting her downfall. A move that must have shocked and stung every bit as much as the arrow that tore through her armour and pierced her flesh. Joan of Arc, now just 17 years old, wounded but victorious from the Siege of Orléans, is soon to be betrayed, in a shocking move that will lead to her trial and eventual death. Hello and welcome to After Dark with me...

What? Anthony and you, Maddie. Madeline, thank you. Oh yeah, look at you with your whole French name. Can I tell you something really embarrassing? We're going to get into this. Sorry. OK, before we do this, this is episode two of two, exploring the history behind the

myth of Joan of Arc. So that's the professional bit out of the way. At this point, we've gotten to the siege of Orlia and Joan has had all these mad visions. She said, look, I can help the DoFans cause. I'm going to go to his camp and ask him, can I lead some of his army into battle? He says, go on, sure. What have I got to lose? And on she goes and she leads them into the siege of Orlean.

And that's been going on for months, by the way. They're all very tired, but she's supposed to help kind of reinvigorate them. They're all very tired. They need a little spa retreat to get over the siege. Wellness time. And she's off and then she gets an arrow and then they're like, don't worry about that Joan, we're just going to put some lard on you and send you back out. And that's exactly what they did. Okay, we've got the housekeeping out of the way. We will come back to this in just a

second. But I have to tell you this, because this is mortifying. You know, the way in the last episode, Maddie, I said that I had from the first year of my degree, I did a language just for the first year and I knew I was dropping out and it was fine. And I did French. And I was okay at everything apart from the grammar. I was diabolical at the grammar. But in the first lesson that you have where you have to speak French the entire time, and you had to introduce yourself, like as you would, but you had to do it in French. And so there was me and I was so green and I was so naive. And I said, Oh God, it makes me feel so sick. I feel nervous. It makes me feel so sick. And I said blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, and Gemma Pell, Antoine, right? Not because I wanted people to think I was called Antoine,

just because I was like, Oh, that's the French of my name. So I'll say my name. And then I went around the room, everyone else, I was first, everyone else went around the room and they just gave their actual normal names. Like they just said their names like they were. And I was like, and then for quite a few weeks afterwards, my tutor thought I was called Antoine. And I was like, no, why, why did I do that? It was so embarrassed. It still makes me, I'm flushing now. My hands have just gone all sweaty, but that has nothing got to do with Joan of Arc. Social anxiety of that. But that has nothing got to do with Joan of Arc. Social anxiety of that. Oh my god.

In my life, I have adopted a saying of yours, which is when you say I'm Scarlet for your ma. And in this moment, I am Scarlet for your ma. Oh, my mother would have been Scarlet for me as well, or for herself as well. If she'd, in fact, hopefully she's not listening to this because I've never said that to her. She would kick me out even still, even though I don't live at home. Okay, well, welcome to this episode with Madeleine and Antoine. That's what reminded me. Cringe. Okay, well, welcome to this episode with Madeleine and Antoine.

That's not reminding me. Cringe. Yeah, no, absolute trauma. How come these two episodes have been very traumatic for us, actually? Not as traumatic, getting back to the story. I think this is going to be more traumatic. She's just had an arrow in her shoulder. So she wins the trauma awards. Yeah, but did she ever embarrass herself socially? Never, probably not.

No. Probably not. So Joan, aside from being pierced by an arrow, has just enjoyed this victory. She is at the high point of her weird career as a divine person on earth working for the king. She's in this moment of triumph really. And in July of 1429, so the sie is in April, we're into July now, Charles VII goes to Ream, lovely cathedral at Ream, by the way, I have been there. And I remember

from memory, because that's what you do, that there's a lot of historic graffiti in that cathedral. It's really, really beautiful. So if anyone lives near there or is visiting, go in and check out the graffiti. Anyway, Charles gets to the cathedral and he is crowned. He's crowned as king. And this is seen as the fulfillment of Joan's divine mission, right? That she all her life has felt that she was there to unite France to help the king become the king. And she's done that now. And she is by his side as this great person imbued with the power of God alongside the monarch. But of course, inevitably, because this is really a story about human beings and not about God at all. The success of Joan

in particular breeds a lot of jealousy. Jealousy from powerful men, because this 17 year old girl has stuck her neck out too far and now she needs to wind it in and shut up. So a lot of Charles' advisors see that Joan has become incredibly powerful, that she has become close to the king. And according to the narrative that she herself has given them and that's grown and grown, she is responsible for the king's success, right? That this 17-year-old girl has had a word with God and sorted it for him. This is a really dangerous position to allow anybody to occupy, let alone a woman. So in September of that year, things start to unravel a little bit. So Joan is really keen to push on. She's like, yeah, God's still on my side. It's all going really well.

Her neck's still stuck right out there. She's not really picking up on the vibes in the room. She's like, everyone loves me, it's fine. She says, right, I'm going to capture Paris now. I'm going to plough on. We are going to get this done. This is fantastic. Paris at the time, by the way, is being held by the English and the Burgundians, who are the French allies of the English. You would think that Charles would be like, yeah, of course, my godly right-hand female leader of troops and men absolutely is going to sort this for me. But instead, he has just started these very delicate political negotiations and he's like, do you know what? Maybe this isn't the time to lay siege to the city. Maybe we just hang back a little

bit and relax. And Joan's like, no, come on, we've got this. And it starts to create a bit of tension. Now, by May of the following year, so that's in September, by May, the end really starts to begin for Joan because she is captured by the Burgundians at Compiègne. And she is sold to the English as a prisoner for 10,000 livre. Now, I imagine that's a huge amount of money in 15th century France. I haven't done the conversion rates. It's so fascinating. How do you put a value on the one hand, a 17-year-old girl, but a 17-year-old girl who is imbued with the power of God and who has been the right-hand person of the king, the enemy of the English in this moment, how do they come up with that number? It's just fascinating to me.

himself, this is who they need, symbolically. And this again speaks to how Joan is seen as a tool for these men, rather than necessarily, you know, we associate so much power and so much agency and influence with Joan. But actually, she only has that while she's granted it, to a certain extent. CHARLEYY Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, I don't think it's that Charles necessarily hands her over, but I think when she's captured, he certainly doesn't seem to make much of an effort to get her back, right? Yeah, he's kind of happy to see her go because as you say, this town's only big enough for one of them and she's got to go. Like, she's not the king. She doesn't have the crown on

her head. So she is a threat because if people have believed her so far and not only believed her, followed her into battle, followed her banner, her religiously legitimized banner. What is to stop Joan from turning around and being like, do you know what, actually, Charles VII isn't the king, God's telling me a different thing now, we need to go in a different direction. So I'm sure there is a part of Charles who's like, okay, this has worked out well. I'm just gonna let this play out. Finish it there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And he does, you know, she's not saved. She's in the hands of the English. And to the English and to the Burgundians, she is an incredibly dangerous

figure. She has legitimised the cause against them. And there are people on both sides, of course, who, you know, do talking about getting into that mindset of the past, people believe that she is talking to God, that God is acting through her. On both sides of this struggle, she needs to be silenced because she holds that power, a power that could override all of these important men. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, host of Echoes of History, the podcast that plunges you into the ranks of the Knights Templar across ancient Egypt and behind the barricades of history's great revolutions to explore the worlds recreated in Assassin's Creed. In our new series, Chasing Shadows, we're in feudal Japan alongside samurai warlords

and shinobi spies. Whether you're gearing up for Assassin's Creed Shadows or captivated by Japan's rich history, this podcast brought to you by Ubisoft and HistoryHit is a must listen. Chasing Shadows is out now on the Echoes of History podcast. Okay, so Joan's with the English now, in France still. Tell us what happens once they get their clammy mitts on her. happens once they get their clammy mitts on her. In the sombre halls of Rouen's ecclesiastical court, a palpable tension hangs in the air

as Joan of Arc, the maid of Orleans, stands before her accusers. The cold stone walls echo the accusations put to her, led by Bishop Pierre Couchon. It's an entirely political move that seeks to discredit Charles VII by proving that Joan, the young peasant girl who stands here now, a battle-hardened warrior, was a heretic all along. The charges she faces include witchcraft. How else could a peasant girl rise to lead an army? Cross-dressing, the gall to wear men's military attire for protection in battle, and heresy for the divine visions that sparked her remarkable journey. Despite brutal interrogation, Joan remains composed and resolute, outwitting her judges multiple times. When asked if she is in God's grace, she replies, If I am not, may God put me there. They're not just questioning, they're undermining

everything. They're saying, right, this is actually witchcraft, you're a heretic. There's something really inevitable about this, isn't there?craft, you're a heretic. There's something really inevitable about this, isn't there? Like, it feels especially inevitable because she's a woman. It's especially inevitable because she's involved in power now, because often with, you know, some of the earlier saints that you mentioned in Episode 1, yes, they had influence, but it was very godly influence and it was a different type of thing. And now we have Joan, who's still remember a teenager who has helped to shape political life in France in one way or another. And you know, that's just too much. They can't allow that to stand and she has served

her purpose. And also bear in mind this faction, the Burgundians and the English, they've lost. They need somebody to blame. And to save face, they're gonna be, well, of course we didn't stand a bloody chance. They had a witch. So, you know, this is who needs to be punished. Yeah, it's a classic thing, isn't it? Of like, undermining this woman and her power, saying that she can't really be believed, that she has got herself into this powerful situation through less than honorable means, through witchcraft, through magic, through deceit, through lying about her divine powers and God and committing this heretical act or series of acts. I mean, it's sort of just a classic way to strip

women of their power. We see it again and again across the centuries. There's nothing new here. But I think in terms of Joan in particular, we spoke in episode one about how there are so many different versions of her applied onto her that she doesn't necessarily herself seek to embody the different versions that we get in this story during her lifetime and in the centuries afterwards. And this is just another example of that, that she becomes a witch in the eyes of the court, that she becomes a heretic. These are just different versions of womanhood, different versions of Joan as a symbol, not as a person, that are applied to her. There's an image that I want to discuss, which is from the same manuscript from the 1490s, so a little bit after her time, but not without living memory. And this time, we saw in episode one her meeting the king, that turning point where

she convinces him that she is divine. And we see her now in this being captured, being taken as a prisoner. And I wonder what you make of it, Anthony. I will say she's wearing the same outfit in this second image that she was in the first one, presumably so she's a recognizable figure throughout the manuscript, but she's a bit of an outfit repeater. But go on, what do you think of this? Well, she's back, back, back, back, back again. She's got the hair still flowing and I would actually say flowing longer this time than it was in the initial. Yeah, it's grown about three foot. All that lard, lard and olive oil on the hair as well

as the wound, clearly. She is dressed in white with a red underskirt, but very much dressed as a woman. She's being led through. Well, she's been led towards actually, interestingly, she's been led towards some kind of a fort or castle type thing, which, you know, symbolically would be showing us power down a path. I wonder if it is the city of Ruan, actually, because that's where she's tried. So I wonder if that's her being being taken to the city.

I've been to Ruan as well. And I can't remember. I assume there are city walls. Maybe not. Definitely would have been then though. Yeah, exactly. Surely. Yeah.

So yeah, she's been led by all these men. There's other men behind them kind of looked like they're discussing what to do with her slightly. She looks very placid and very serene and very almost, you know, again, it's that kind of biblical resignation, if God wills it so shall it be kind of a thing. She's ready to be martyred, isn't she? I think, you know, that's, you know, okay, this is still an image from the 15th century, but you, but maybe a generation or even two generations after she meets her end. There's a sense at this point in the story, in terms of this retelling anyway, that she is rising above everything because she so believes that she's right, that even if she's martyred, it doesn't matter. I think kind of biblical. It reminds me of depictions of Christ being taken with the cross to be killed, to be crucified. And there's something

there about that kind of, yeah, that resignation, that giving in to martyrdom, that this process, these things being done to you are only going to elevate you in your message. And I think that's how Joan is portrayed. I mean, I doubt she felt that way in this moment. You know, she's up on trial, being accused of all these things. And as you say, she's still a teenager, you know, a term that very much comes in the 20th century, you know, you sort of think of the 50s and 60s, and this almost invention of the teenager. And that actually, in the past, people were introduced to a form of adulthood a lot earlier. And that, you know, as a whatever she is now 18 year old, I think 19 year old maybe that she is very much an adult in terms of her own society,

the context that she's in, but she's still a young woman, whether we see her as a teenager as a child still or not, she is still a young woman being tried by men who are much older with much more authority. And it's a power imbalance that we find often in history. But I think in terms of accessing the human being that was Joan herself, I wonder what she was experiencing in that moment. And it must have just been panic. I haven't thought about Joan for quite the many years, probably since that movie, I suppose, not in any real depth. And so these episodes have been really interesting in that I now partially believe absolutely nothing that we're left with about her, because everything is so agenda filled. Like everything

is so agenda filled, and it's not coming to us from her. And even if it was, she's part of that agenda too. And gender-filled right? There's so much of her story that is about her womanhood, that her womanhood being changed or altered or abused or subverted, which is so interesting. That probably wasn't something that she was actively thinking about in her own story. I don't know, it's weird. It feels very like she's constantly in places that we're told she wants to be. But I don't see the appeal for her in any way, shape or form. And it's always people in authority saying, well, she made her way here and she did this and she did this and she, she, she, she, she. And there'll be elements of truth in that I can't help but feel instinctively that, you know, I don't doubt that she thought she was hearing the voice of God. We know that that's

really common for a lot of people in their, a lot of women particularly, in their early to late teenage years. It's absolutely accounted for. France is a really good example of a lot of those things. In the same way that poltergeist cases are always associated with teenagers and specifically teenage girls, right, that this is an age where you are susceptible to ideas of sort of otherworldliness, and you're exploring your power, I suppose, and trying to negotiate your place in the world. And the supernatural, whether it's religious or otherwise, kind of comes into that.

Yeah, it's seen as a precursor to that that we understand of like, you know, the Battersea poltergeist, the girls stopped having those divine conversations, and they started being more linked to poltergeist activity or paranormal activity. And so I don't doubt that. But you asked, do you think she was kind of relaxed into her martyrdom? or if she was petrified? And to me, it just really feels to me as she was probably petrified for quite some time. Like, I don't know. I mean, yeah, and we can never know because it's so myth made. that in May 1431, so she's been a prisoner for a while at this point, she's taken to the cemetery of a church and she is made to look at and eventually made to sign a document that essentially says, I made it all up, I am a criminal. And she does sign it. She hesitates, but she signs it because presumably she is so ground down in that moment. She's so terrified. She is so feared for her own safety, for her life, all the rest of it.

And it's important to say, as you guessed at in episode one, Antony, she was illiterate. So there's a good chance actually that she was forced to sign something that she didn't really know what she was signing. I doubt the whole thing was read out to her or explained. And you know, it's a complicated legal document that she's presented to sign something that she didn't really know what she was signing. I doubt the whole thing was read out to her or explained. And you know, it's a complicated legal document that she's presented with. When she does sign it, she is said to have done so because she believes it's pleasing to the Lord. This is what she's being instructed to do. And there's a sort of sense there of like, I definitely understand this in terms of sort of female obedience, that someone tells her to do something and it's kind of

a bit of people pleasing. She's like, well, these men in authority are telling me this is what God wants and I don't want to piss God off, so I better do it. And then days later, and this is a kind of interesting insight into the person that she was and that she did have some strength about her that is, I suppose, backed by this belief in the divine, she withdraws that confession. Maybe she just has time to actually think about it and to realise what she signed and the meaning of that, the consequence of that. But she withdraws her confession and she says that she would rather die than deny the truth. I think that's so interesting. I think it gives you a little bit of an insight into her mental state, albeit, you

know, you have to speculate and we have to fill in the blanks. But there is, yeah, there's something there's a little hint of something. There is, but it might also be manipulation in another way. So just as her life is written for a particular purpose during the time she's with Charles VII, so the aftermath is written for a different purpose by a different set of people with more religious bent because they are shoring up this direct link to God. So really what we're told is we're told she said that and we're told this is how she felt because we don't have it in her own words. And there are plenty of other powerful men in the church now this time, who very easily will have even within,

you know, because you're talking about some of those stories, they come out within kind of 60 years of her having died. Those images are kind of within 60 years of her having died. They now have another agenda for her. And that agenda is to shore up the Catholic Church and to say that God is talking to us. He walks amongst us, he is controlling us, and you should be controlled by him. And so Joan takes on this other mantle then very, very soon after her death, where, you know, she's seen as a figurehead in another way. It's so interesting because I started episode one by saying we're going to try and get closer to the real Joan and her real history. I feel further and further away from her actually the more we kind of discover about this.

I think that's a really interesting point to take on board. Yeah, and it is really frustrating. And even as you say, there is a question mark over how much we can read into her behaviour, because even the behaviour that's reported may not actually be the way that she acted, the actions that she took. So it's really interesting. What I will say for the next part of our story is either way, it ain't looking good. On the fateful May morning of 1431, crowds begin to gather in Rouen's marketplace surrounding the grim scaffold. At the centre of it, Joan of Arc, barely 19 years old, stands defiantly, bound to a stake. The executioner's torch is lowered to the base of the woods stacked around her, and

soon the flames begin licking at her feet. Her cries of Jesus, Jesus ring out as the flames roar louder, engulfing her. Watching in horrified fascination, the crowd are soon hushed to astonishment. When the last of the fire dies to embers, there, amidst the ashes and smoke, is Joan's heart, unburned and intact. Though the English authorities attempt to burn her heart twice more, they eventually cast all her remains into the Seine. While the water closes over the last remnants of Jeanne d'Arc, her legend and belief in her

sainthood is set on its way. Lies! You're telling me lies on the podcast now, Mary Perlings. I love to tell you fake history. I love this part of the story. I mean, clearly it's not true but love it. It's a lot. It's very, very dramatic and it just, again, it takes us away from her though, doesn't it? It kind of goes and here we are left with almost like the sacred heart when we think about that Catholic iconography. I mean, it's so Catholic. It's so, so, so Catholic. Yeah, yeah. No, definitely. And,

you know, it creates, it's kind of getting close to a relic of her, even though the heart itself is thrown into the sand. So we, you know, it hasn't survived as a relic, but there is a sense of that being a sort of, you know, that if someone else had got their hands on that, they would have kept it as a relic and it would be in Rouen Cathedral or wherever now. I have no doubt there were probably several Joan of Arc hearts circulating in the years after her death. It's absolutely fascinating. It's so Catholic, but also as you say, it kind of removes us again from this person that even her bodily remains are treated in this kind of mythologising way. Even in death, even when she's literally reduced to embers, she still has this symbology applied to her.

AC It's a little annoying. Do you know what I mean by that? Like, just the ways in which she is so consistently used, we know that there is another trial, like, what is this? 20 years, 25 years later, she's put on trial again in Ruan, but this time she's found innocent. She ain't there this time. She's not there. And it's like, but look who puts her on trial. It's the Pope. And so this kind of feeling, and that is 25 years later. So very quickly, we're like, we can use her. Let's use her for this. Just as Charles the Seventh had used her and it's, yeah. Yeah, it's so fascinating. Yeah, she's declared innocent,

as you say, 25 years later. And then she has to wait quite a long time though to be canonised. So she's canonised. I didn't realise it was that long. Yeah. She's canonised in 1920 by the Catholic Church, of course. And I think it's interesting that it takes that long for that to happen because she is so ingrained into European culture. She's painted by romantic artists in Britain, in Germany, in France. She is the subject of so many visual representations, cinematic representations later on, theatrical representations she's sung about. She is understood in all these different ways. And it takes that long for her to be canonized. Really, really interesting. I have three depictions of her that I just want you to really quickly describe and then

we can think about them. I will tell you where this one is from and then I won't tell you about the other two. But the first one is a little doodle on the edge of a manuscript. And this is the only depiction we know of of Joan during her lifetime. She was still alive when this depiction was produced in 1429. I am obsessed. Obsessed. I want this. I don't know how I'm going to get my hands on it. I don't think I can, but it's absolutely incredible. Can I just say it would make the most amazing tattoo? It would. And I'm not a tattoo-y person, but yes, that would make a great tattoo actually. But Maddie, this I think might be the closest

we can get to her in all of this episode. And look at what we're looking at. We see a woman dressed as a woman, standing in power as a woman, she's in a female dress and it's 1429. Now she has a sword in hand, she's carrying the banner that says IHS on top so she's carrying the religious banner. So don't get me wrong, this is iconography, this is still trying to do something. But that to me is the closest we can get to her. Like her, there she is in 1429 in her own lifetime. That for me feels as close as we can get to her. We'll post this image on our socials because that's a great image. I love that image. It's so exciting, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And the fact that she's not in men's clothing is so fascinating. I don't think it's suggesting that she never dressed as a man. Yes, yes, yes. she never dressed as a man. I think it's saying that her femininity, her womanhood is crucial

to her depiction, to how she's understood in that moment. Her being a woman is so important. It's so fascinating. Then we get these later representations. To be honest, I went down a rabbit hole and I did spend, honestly, about a good hour looking at different portrayals of Joan in the 18th and 19th century. But I settled on this one. It's the scene that I've just described of her death, but it's so coded with the romanticism of the late 18th, early 19th century. It's actually painted by a German artist in 1843, but it's so dramatic. It's almost cinematic. It's the scene you probably have in your head for this moment.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It really speaks to the invention of the image. The sticks beneath her, the timber beneath her is starting to smolder. This is just before the flames start to lick. She is standing on a platform and she's chained to what looks like just a very rudimentary piece of wood. The wind is blowing her skirts. She has shorter hair in this. See that this is now very interesting because we go from that 1429 depiction

where her hair looks like it's plaited potentially and it's certainly long. And now it's shoulder length and she looks very pale. She's looking up into the heavens. You know, she's looking to God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's such a, a sort of a romantic posture to take. She's sort of poetic. And yeah, I'm obsessed. And then the final image is absolutely the version that I think we have inherited in our modern day of this defiant, gender defining, or gender defying, I suppose, strong version of Joan. I wonder how much can be said for, as Charles VII used her, as the Pope then used her 20 years later. So too, we're using her symbolically to give these different messages at different times. And we've spoken about this before in terms of Anne Boleyn, for instance. She

can mean different things at different times. And that's where the icon status comes in, where actually we strip away the personhood, she no longer remains a human being because we don't have that access to her. And she becomes an icon and therefore we can recycle her depending on what we need her to be. Well, that's absolutely the case in the third image, we've got Chapel Rowan at the VMAs dressed in this really shiny hyper feminized armor actually, again, sort of a literal armor breastplate, but that accentuates the female breasts and the cinched in waist and everything. It's very sort of feminine. She's got this long red classic Chapel Rowan hair, but very sort of Joan of Arc coded, plaited behind her and she's holding this giant sword. We've seen lots of pop stars try and embody Joan of Arc over the years. There's the Kate Bush, I can't remember which album it is, I'm sure there's an album cover where she's similarly

actually in armour and she's got kind of cropped hair and stuff. It's interesting that Joan has become in our own modern moment that is probably less religiously governed than the past has been. Joan has become more of a figure for feminism, I suppose, and particularly kind of pop feminism. I don't necessarily just mean in terms of pop music, but she's a shorthand for female empowerment and resistance and rebellion in some way. I think that's kind of interesting given that in her own lifetime, she existed within all the limits of her own society and subverted them. When we think about her vow of chastity and things, she took the tools available to her in order to empower herself as much as she could. But we've seen her

so often fulfilling different ideals of womanhood. We think about those Victorian versions of her. So we have the sweeping romanticism of the 18th and early 19th centuries where she's this kind of poetical, literally romantic figure. And then the Victorians give her another makeover where she's kind of buttoned up in her armour and she once again represents chastity and female virtue in a very Victorian way. And then I think for us now she's a rebel again. And I think that's exciting. And I'm sort of interested to see where she'll go next, if she'll continue, you know, she's still incredibly relevant. So presumably she will continue to be so for centuries to come. It's been an interesting exploration. And it's been somewhat frustrating

in some ways. And I mean that in a kind of as positive as frustration can be. And that my takeaway from this is that we know so little about the woman herself, actually. Only what people want us to know and only what people are powerful enough to make us try to believe about her. But what I will hold on to with that in mind is that image from 1429. I think that is so striking. I think it's as close as we can get. Does it tell us an awful lot? No, it doesn't. But there's something about that particular image that I think given the contemporaneous of the depiction, that it's from her own time, that she was living and breathing at that time,

it's as close as we might be able to get. So that for me, and I've never seen that image before. So thank you for bringing that to the podcast, Paddy Melling. You're very welcome, Antoine. And we will be sharing that on our socials. So do follow us both on Instagram and you will see that. Obviously search Antoine Delaney and you will find it. On that note, I think it's probably time to end. This has been, I've really enjoyed these two episodes. I always love a historical figure that has shape shifted in the centuries since their death. And Joan is kind of in some ways the absolute archetype of that. You know, she's the she's the queen of shape shifting. If you have enjoyed these two episodes on Joan, get in touch with us. If you have suggestions for similar figures

you'd like us to treat in this way, you can email us at afterdark at historyhit.com. Please do not DM us on Instagram, simply because we get so many DMs, which is lovely. I try to look at as many as possible, but I don't have anywhere to file them. So yeah, send them in. Your ideas are too good to waste. Send them into that email address. Yeah, Maddie, thank you for this. It makes me want to go and look at some scholarship on Joan of Arc, which I didn't start my day thinking I would want to do that. So I want to see if there's what's out there on her. So I'm going to do that, I think. Goodbye. you