![]() ![]() ![]() Nowadays, she might have expended her passions relatively safely on a few tweets (“OMFG! Cn sum1 tell Dauf am on way 2 end haterz? #Orleanslolz”) and a few Instagram snaps of the visions and their accompanying golden light (#nofilter), but in 1429 the only question that bothered her countrymen and the Dauphin when she got there was – were the voices and the visions sent by God or the devil?įortunately, the chance to raise the seven-month siege of Orleans presented a handy testing ground. Deep in the 100 Years’ War and the Armagnac countryside, a teenage peasant girl hears the voice of God and his angels telling her to cross 250 miles of enemy territory to the Dauphin’s court in Chinon, persuade him to give her an army, use said army to drive the English out of France for ever and have the Dauphin crowned king. In Joan of Arc: God’s Warrior (BBC2), Dr Helen Castor stripped away the accreted layers of subsequent interpretation, myth and legend to give us the barest, cleanest bones she could of what is, even at its sparest, an astonishing story. For all those similarly in need of correction on the subject of the Maid of Orleans, last night was our night. M y image of Joan of Arc lies somewhere between the black and white photograph of Dorothy Tutin on the front of my A-level copy of Jean Anouilh’s The Lark and Milla Jovovich gangling androgynously through Luc Besson’s The Messenger. ![]()
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