Aspects of Joan's life that I expected to find here - such as information about her youth or her interactions during her campaign - are barely mentioned in fact, the narrative only covers the two years of her life between the time that she first approached the French court with her mission, and her death. Joan herself doesn't appear in the book until nearly 100 pages in, and her execution is a mere 100 pages after that this isn't the saint's life story, and readers who are looking for a new biography about her may be disappointed. Castor is able to summarize the complexities of this turbulent era succinctly, but with enough detail to be entertaining while still keeping those unfamiliar with this period of French history from getting bogged down. It is this divide which shaped the war before and after Joan's time, and the book's concentration is on the interplay between these two factions. The focus is French history from Agincourt in 1415 to the end of the Hundred Year's War in 1453, particularly on the divide between the Armagnacs the group of French nobles who supported the Dauphin (who, with Joan's help, was crowned Charles VII of France) and the Burgundians, who supported the English monarch Henry V's claim to the French throne. Rather than concentrating on the life of Joan of Arc, readers learn about the historical Joan the Maid (as she referred to herself and was known in her own time), focusing the narrative on the stage on which Joan's drama played out: a France not only at war with England but divided against itself.Ĭastor maintains that it's impossible to truly understand Joan's role without an awareness of the historical backdrop, and goes to great lengths to explain the complicated relationships that created the political crisis into which Joan emerged. While many biographies of this extraordinary woman have been written, Castor takes a unique approach. Most readers will be familiar with the story of Joan of Arc: An uneducated French peasant girl hears voices from God, convinces the Dauphin (the heir apparent to the French throne) that based on this holy mandate she can lead his armies to victory against the English and then does so, is captured by her enemies and burned at the stake as a heretic, and is canonized for her actions centuries later.

In this non-fiction account, Helen Castor brings to life the political volatility of fifteenth-century France and the factors that contributed to Joan of Arc's remarkable role in history.

Joan of Arc by Helen Castor