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How did a reportedly thin, otherworldly peasant girl become a leader of professionally violent men and then a national icon? Katherine J Chen explores this question in her second novel, Joan. Since then, she has been wielded as a symbol by wildly opposed ideologues: fascist and communist, Vichy government and French Resistance, nationalist and feminist. Wearing armour, with hair cut short as a man’s, she led the French to several victories over the English and their allies, until she was captured and imprisoned, condemned as a heretic, and burned at the stake at the age of 19. At 17 she presented herself to the Dauphin’s court at Chinon, and, based on her God-sent visions, persuaded him she could save France. She had visions of saints from about age 13. She was born circa 1412 in the village of Domrémy, north-east France, during the hundred years war. T he life of the woman we know today as Joan of Arc is astoundingly well documented.