Joan of Arc
1412 – 1431
Medieval Era
I heard voices in a garden when I was thirteen and let them lead me out of my father's fields to a king who had lost his kingdom. I rode at the head of armies, put a crown on a hesitant prince, and was sold, tried, and burned by nineteen. I signed a paper to save my life, then took it back, and chose the fire.
Chapters
Chapter 11337 – 1412
A Kingdom Divided Against Itself
For seventy-five years, English kings and French kings have fought over who wears the crown of France. By 1412, the kingdom is torn in half from within, and its people are waiting, half in prayer, half in despair, for someone God has not yet sent.
Chapter 21412 – 1425
The Voices in the Garden
A farmer's daughter grows up between the church bell and the plow, until one summer afternoon the sky lowers itself into her father's garden and speaks her name.
Turning points
The Vow in the Garden1425
The vision has gone but the voices remain, naming Joan the promised virgin of prophecy. Her father expects a marriage soon. The village expects a peasant's obedience. A thirteen-year-old girl must decide what a voice from heaven is worth.
Chapter 31425 – 1429
The Black Doublet to Chinon
A peasant girl in borrowed men's clothes rides across enemy country to stake her secret on a frightened prince. In a private chamber at Chinon she stands before the uncrowned king with only one thing left to spend.
Turning points
The Sign Only a King Would Know1429
In a private chamber of the royal court, Joan has finally been granted a hearing with the Dauphin. His council wants her sent home. Her voices told her he is the true king. The proof is a secret only he and his confessor could know, and speaking it aloud will either bind a war to God or expose her as a fraud.
Chapter 41429
The Arrow at Les Tourelles
A farm girl rides into a starving city with a white banner and turns a losing siege inside out in four days. An arrow through the shoulder stops her at the last wall. The men behind her are calling retreat while the light goes.
Turning points
Rise from the Wound or Yield1429
The arrow is out and the shoulder packed, but daylight is failing over the Loire and the assault on the great gatehouse is thinning. Captains who never wanted this attack are already sending word to break off before dark. The soldiers who followed the banner into the ditch are watching the field dressing to see whether the wounded Maid stands.
Chapter 51429
The Road Cleared at Patay
The Loire captains ride out to hunt the retreating English. In three towns and one open field, an army that had held France for a generation stops existing. Joan turns from the killing ground and names what the victory is for.
Turning points
Normandy or Reims1429
The English field army is destroyed. Talbot is a prisoner, Fastolf is fleeing, and for the first time in memory the road north stands open. Joan's captains, drunk on the day, want to march west into English Normandy and take the war home. Joan wants the crown.
Chapter 61429
The Crown at Reims
The road to the sacred city bends open under a girl in white plate. A moat filled with wood breaks the last holdout, and a Dauphin becomes a king. The mission she named at fourteen is finished, and she is still standing in the cathedral with the banner in her hand.
Turning points
March on Paris or Hold the Truce1429
The consecration is over. Charles is a crowned king, and his negotiators are already drafting a fifteen-day truce with the Duke of Burgundy. Alençon and the fighting captains see the road to Paris undefended and the English regent's army shaken. The court sees a chance to buy what a girl in armor cannot promise them a second time.
Chapter 71429
The Bolt Beneath the Wall
The Maid who crowned a king rides north to finish the war, only to learn that the king has already begun to finish with her. A wound in the leg, a bridge pulled up behind her, and the doors of the court beginning to close.
Turning points
Obedience, Or Another War1429
Days after the retreat from Paris, Joan is quartered near the king at Gien while the court winds down the campaign. Charles has bound himself to the negotiation with Burgundy. Alençon has been sent away. The Paris theologians are circulating letters that her voices were never from God. She can still ride, barely, and small lords are already writing to ask if her banner is free.
Chapter 81430
The Field at Compiègne
A soldier the king will not name rides north with volunteers to save a town he has already traded away. Between a mercenary's execution and a Burgundian net closing on a flooded meadow, the Maid learns what a banner is worth without a king behind it.
Turning points
The Rearguard at Margny1430
The sortie against the Burgundian camp at Margny has collapsed. Joan's men are racing across the flooded meadow toward the drawbridge of Compiègne with Burgundian horsemen closing on the rearguard. The town's captain may drop the portcullis at any moment to save the walls, and Charles will send no rescue.
Chapter 91430 – 1431
The Signature at Saint-Ouen
Sold north, tried by a bishop who worked for the English, worn down by months of questions and a room full of instruments meant to break her, Joan is walked out into a churchyard and handed a parchment she cannot read.
Turning points
The Parchment at Saint-Ouen1431
On a scaffold in the churchyard of Saint-Ouen, Cauchon reads out the sentence of condemnation while a cleric holds a parchment and a quill toward her hand. The pyre is stacked in sight. The English soldiers in the crowd want a body. The bishop wants a signature.
Chapter 101431
The Clothes She Chose Again
A recantation bought Joan her life and lost her soul in the same breath. What her voices called cowardice, her guards turned into a trap. She had to answer both.
Turning points
The Bishop at the Door1431
Cauchon has come into the cell with his clerics to confirm the relapse. He needs a sentence from her mouth that will let him hand her to the English. The stake in the old market square is already being built.
Chapter 111431
The Fire at Vieux-Marché
Condemned as a relapsed heretic and abandoned to the English, a nineteen-year-old girl walks through Rouen to a stake already raised, asking only to see the cross as she burns.
Chapter 121431 – 1920
Ashes Into Altar and Flag
The girl the Church burned becomes the girl the Church crowns. Between the pyre and the halo lie five centuries of politics, and a lesson about who gets to say what a life was for.
Key Relationships
Charles VII of France
patron
The Dauphin she crowned gave her the army, banner, and legitimacy for her mission — then abandoned her to the English pyre without ransom.
John II, Duke of Alençon
collaborator
Her closest and most trusting military partner, who treated her advice as command during the Loire campaign and the road to Reims.
Pierre Cauchon
adversary
The Bishop of Beauvais who orchestrated her heresy trial and manufactured the legal machinery that sent her to the stake.
Robert de Baudricourt
patron
The Vaucouleurs garrison commander whose eventual escort to Chinon was the indispensable first crack in the wall between village girl and royal court.
Jean, Bastard of Orléans (Dunois)
collaborator
The Armagnac commander at Orléans who admitted her into the city and came to treat her tactical instincts as decisive.
Yolande of Aragon
patron
Charles's mother-in-law, whose women verified Joan's virginity and whose political backing helped secure her a military commission.
Saints Michael, Margaret, and Catherine (the Voices)
mentor
The visionary presences she credited as the source of every decision — her authority, her defiance, and finally her return to the stake.
Jacques d'Arc
family
Her peasant farmer father, whose authority and disapproval she defied to answer her voices, defining the first cost of her mission.
Isabelle Romée
family
Her mother, source of her devout Catholic formation and, decades later, the petitioner who launched the rehabilitation trial that restored her name.
Jean de Metz
friend
One of the first men to believe her at Vaucouleurs, whose sworn support helped persuade Baudricourt and who then escorted her to Chinon.
Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy
adversary
The English-allied duke whose troops captured her at Compiègne and sold her to the enemy, ending her military life.
John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford
adversary
English regent of France whose war she was sent by her voices to reverse, and whose soldiers guarded and burned her.