She may be the
most famous person to ever get burned at the
stake, but do you really know everything there is
to know about Joan of Arc? Joan of Arc, or la Pucelle as
she preferred to be called, was one of the most iconic
and brilliant female soldiers of all time. And there's a whole
lot more to her rags to riches to rags story than
you'd probably ever realize. Today, we're exploring the
real story of Joan of Arc. But before we get started,
be sure to subscribe to the Weird History channel. Oh, and one more thing. Leave a comment and let us know
what famous historical women you would like to hear about. OK, it's time to travel back
in time to the fantastically twisted time of Joan of Arc. You know you're an
icon in the making when a world-famous wizard
predicts your emergence onto the international stage. Merlin, the legendary wizard
who counseled King Arthur, had predicted a maiden would
come out of an ancient forest to rescue France. And Joan certainly
delivered on that. And it wasn't just Merlin. Other prophecies were
circulating at the time that a virgin from Lorraine,
Joan's hometown in France, would come and save
France from England. The prophetess Marie of Avignon
claimed a woman in armor would save France. Was it a coincidence
or was Joan of Arc, a woman who loves
armor, destined to live out the life she did? Living out of prophecy
from the Merlin is a pretty cool way to carve
out a path for yourself. We all know Joan of Arc
was burned at the stake by the English, but
what if she wasn't? Some scholars theorize that
it was at least possible that a substitute maiden
could have been burned in Joan's place,
with Joan assuming a new identity after the fact. After her death, it became
a tradition for women to essentially cosplay as
Joan and claim to be her. Scholars are pretty
sure they were all fake, but one woman stood out,
Claude des Armoises. In one version of
this history, Claude was a real-life
wife and mother who was supported by Joan of
Arc's real-life brothers. They supposedly recognized her
at first sight as their sister and Claude assumed that identity
in order to gain their support. The story goes she didn't
last long in the role of Joan, and eventually
confessed her guilt. However in the alternate
version of this tale, Claude is the identity the real
Joan took on after the bait and switch at the stake. What a baller move, Joan. But unfortunately,
Joan wasn't perfect. With all that
warfare, she was bound to have a skeleton
or two in her closet, like maybe the time when-- While Joan was devoutly
religious and pious during her entire life, she
did accidentally associate with some shady characters. One of Joan's most trusted
and important soldiers was this guy, Gilles de Rais. Gilles, who was said to have
been guilty of torture, rape, murdering hundreds
of kids in a dungeon, and worshipping the devil, led
Joan's troops and also aided Joan when she was
injured at Orléans. Joan may have had a
direct phone line to God, but the girl was a mess when
it came to picking friends. I mean, the guy
was also probably one of the first ever
recorded serial killers. You can do better, Joan. Was Joan's ascension
from poor maiden to friend of the royals
a case of nepotism? Probably not, but
some have said she had really intense
kingly connections, so much so that she was actually
a secret royal lovechild. Ah, scandal! One theory suggests Joan
wasn't born a peasant girl, but she was really Charles the
VII's illegitimate half-sister cousin, the child
of his mother-- the famously licentious
Queen Isabeau of Bavaria-- and her lover, his uncle,
Louis, duke of Orléans. Talk about a tangled
web of incest drama. It's like Game of Thrones
with a better final season. Some say this was
supposedly the reason Joan was able to pick out the
dauphin from amongst a bunch of his courtiers upon meeting
him for the first time. Sadly for conspiracy theorists,
this probably wasn't true. These dramatic rumors do
make for some seriously salacious 13th century
tabloid fodder though. Can you imagine the headlines? When she hit puberty, Joan began
to hear saints speaking to her. They told her to be pious
and eventually to save France from the English. At the time, she was
considered a saint receiving the word of God. But by today's standards, Joan
was afflicted with something a lot less heavenly. Modern scientists have
posthumously diagnosed Joan with conditions like
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or a specific
kind of epilepsy to explain her hearing voices. Although considering
no modern doctor ever got a chance
to meet Joan, it's hard to say officially
just what was going on in that head of hers. Aside from mental illness,
some modern scholars have suggested that she suffered
from bovine tuberculosis, postulating that the consumption
of unpasteurized milk could have given
Joan brain lesions. When all else fails,
blame it on the bad milk. Joan definitely had
all the right friends in all the right places,
and there's likely a reason for that. Some say the powerful
royal Duchess Yolande of Aragon, later
Anjou, used Joan as a political and
propaganda tool to push the future King
Charles the VII's agenda. You see, Yolande was
Charles' mother-in-law and a big advocate for him to
take power over the English and his rival, the
Duke of Burgundy. Perhaps, Yolande
knew that the people would feel inspired
by Joan's story of God telling her to save
France from England. It's said that Yolande
used Joan for propaganda to get her way or
maybe the royals just liked Joan a whole lot. Maybe it's because she
found ways to win them over, like the time she caught
onto one of Charles' cheeky little royal pranks. It must have been boring being
a member of the French royal family in 1429 because Charles,
the heir to the throne, was certainly up to
some weird behavior when Joan met him in
the March of that year. Obeying the voices in her head,
Joan schlepped all the way to his court in Chinon. But when she got there, someone
else was sitting on his throne. As a bit of a prank
perhaps, Charles had chosen to blend
in with the crowd and had a friend take up
residence in the royal chair. But there was no
fooling Joan of Arc. Joan of smarts was able to
pick Charles out of the crowd and address him
directly, even as he was in his commoner disguise. Her powers of intuition
were so strong that their attempted
prank on what they thought was a naive country
girl fell completely flat on its face. If you've been watching this
and thinking, Joan of Arc sounds cool, she
might be someone I'd like to be friends with,
you might want to think again. Joan of Arc may have
been a fierce warrior and vessel for
heavenly messages, but she was kind of judgey. Truth be told, unless you
were a devout Christian that fell directly in line
with all of her beliefs, she probably
wouldn't want to sit at the same lunch table as you. Despite her status as a young
virginal female prophetess warrior, Joan wasn't too kind to
other marginalized Christians, whom she deemed heretics. In a letter she
dictated to a scribe, she condemned the Hussites,
a group historians describe as proto-Protestants. She dubbed them followers of
a disgraceful and unlawful superstition. Joan would rant
about them saying, you persecute and plan
to overthrow and destroy this faith which God Almighty,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit have raised, founded, exalted,
and enlightened a thousand ways through a thousand miracles. Joan went so far as to say that
if she wasn't so busy fighting the English, she'd drop
everything and fight them herself. In that same letter,
Joan insulted Muslims and their faith. Joan, you need to calm down. Puberty is a rough time for
all of us, but Joan of Arc had an especially
tumultuous go of it. At the same time her
friends' and peers' bodies were changing, Joan started
hearing voices of some saints and an archangel. She was only 12 or 13. And you thought
your middle school experience was humiliating. On top of dealing
with normal puberty, Joan had to try
and make sense of these new and strange feelings. Joan was literally
receiving directives to lead an army to victory
from the voices in her head. That's almost as
confounding picking out your first deodorant. Did the rush of hormones
cause her to hear voices? Well, it's noteworthy that the
first thing they ever told her was that she shouldn't
pursue a man, but she remain a
single virgin instead. Clearly, her preteen
hormones were not ready for that
first kiss anytime soon. Most teens are
moody, but Joan was, let's just say, a
bit of a hurricane. Joan's teenage
tendency toward anger revealed itself through
her moral righteousness as she took it out on the adult
male soldiers she was leading. If you've ever met a
teenage hall monitor with a bone to pick, Joan would
blow them out of the water. Some say that while
leading her troops, she'd forbid any and
all swearing or failure to attend mass. What a narc. Joan drove mistresses
and prostitutes out of the camp with her sword. Once when a Scottish
dude confessed to eating stolen
meat, she attempted to slap him in retribution. Rather than just going by
Joan, this warrior woman dubbed herself la Pucelle,
best translated from French as the maid or the girl. In fact, she favored
that nickname instead of her regular
name, perhaps because of its religious connotations. She loved associations
with purity, especially with regards to her
own virginity and the Virgin Mary. Also Joan probably
liked the moniker because it distinguished her
from many of the other women hanging around soldiers, a.k.a. prostitutes, or maybe
she just didn't really like the name Joan. Joan of Arc's mysterious path
to martyrdom and sainthood is one filled with
intrigue, conspiracies, and magical portents. From the voices in her
head that may or may not have been the most prescient
form of mental illness in history to Merlin's
prediction of her coming, Joan of Arc is one of the
most intriguing figures of the Middle Ages. So was it God? Was it magic? Was it mental illness
or did the girl just want an excuse to boss a bunch
of adult male soldiers around? Either way, it's clear
that her place in history is cemented eternally
for a reason. While the British may
have burned her body at the stake when she
refused to confess, her story is a candle
that will burn on forever. What do you think
of Joan of Arc? Let us know in the
comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other videos from our Weird History.
