Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your
Speaker 2: weekly podcast where I'm really excited about. This week is
Speaker 2: gonna be so interesting. I've wanted to research this person
Speaker 2: for so long. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. I think
Speaker 2: my job is fine. I don't have any particular I
Speaker 2: love my job. It's so good. Okay, And my guest
Speaker 2: today is Molly Conger.
Speaker 3: Hi, Hi, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to
Speaker 3: hear about a cool guy.
Speaker 2: I know, well it's not gonna be a guy. But Mollie,
Speaker 2: as everyone knows, is just jealous because she doesn't have
Speaker 2: her own Cool Zone Media show.
Speaker 3: So jealous. Yeah, it's eating me up inside.
Speaker 4: Oh wait, yeah, we gave you one of those, didn't
Speaker 4: we What what?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No way, I scripted this bit. It would have
Speaker 2: come off more naturally if I had scripted it.
Speaker 3: Wait, Mollie, are you our newest weekly show host. I'm
Speaker 3: so excited for you guys to hear about kind of
Speaker 3: the opposite of this show, I guess is weird guys
Speaker 3: who did really bad stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Molly's show is called Weird Little Guys and it's
Speaker 4: out now and it's a weekly show on your podcast.
Speaker 4: Feeds all of them.
Speaker 2: What day of the week is it?
Speaker 3: Thir's six?
Speaker 2: Cool. It's good because I listen to a lot of
Speaker 2: podcasts because I walk my dog every day and I
Speaker 2: do a lot of like physical stuff around the land
Speaker 2: I live on, you know, And by the end of
Speaker 2: the weekend, I'm usually out of cool soun media podcasts
Speaker 2: and I'm forced to listen to lesser podcasts. Oh wow, and.
Speaker 3: I have one more hour at the end of the week.
Speaker 2: I know. It's a little treat just for me. So
Speaker 2: today's Hero when I'm just gonna use Hero. I don't
Speaker 2: like feminizing. Hero isn't a weird little guy, but is
Speaker 2: a weird little girl slash woman, depending on where in
Speaker 2: the story you come in. Because oh, I forgot the
Speaker 2: rest of the credits. The other voice you've heard is Sophie.
Speaker 2: I just got so excited abou who we're going to talk?
Speaker 2: But Hi, Sophie, it's a good topic.
Speaker 4: I'm very excited about this. Hi, Hi Magpie, Hi Mollie. Oh,
Speaker 4: we're just hanging's got the girls together.
Speaker 2: On the zoom on the zoom I know, and as
Speaker 2: always our audio engineers, Rory. Everyone say hi to Rory.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: Rory Hi Ror Hi Rory. Our theme music was written
Speaker 2: for us by Unwoman. This week, we are going to
Speaker 2: go back further in time than we've ever gone back
Speaker 2: in time besides the episode where we talked about how
Speaker 2: humans tamed dogs.
Speaker 3: That's yeah, well that rocks.
Speaker 2: That was like thirty thousand years. But we're going back
Speaker 2: to the fourteen hundreds. We're going to a country called France.
Speaker 2: I've heard of this country.
Speaker 3: Ooh.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about a soldier, a badass soldier
Speaker 2: who winds up deservedly, it turns out, taking a lot
Speaker 2: of credit for saving France from an English invasion. She
Speaker 2: was driven by visions from God and then she was
Speaker 2: burned at the stake.
Speaker 3: Oh I know her.
Speaker 2: I know she's the most famous female soldier in history.
Speaker 3: Unless they did it more than once.
Speaker 2: It's Joan of Arc.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, no, we're good. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I was like, I don't think I said saint
Speaker 2: part yet. I think and I've like looked this up
Speaker 2: a couple times. It seems like it couldn't be true
Speaker 2: because the Catholics like burning people, right, But I think
Speaker 2: this is the only Catholic saint who was burned to
Speaker 2: death by the Catholic Church, which is part of why
Speaker 2: I took more than four hundred years, very close to
Speaker 2: five hundred years for the Catholic Church to get around
Speaker 2: to making her a saint.
Speaker 3: They don't like to admit they made a mistake.
Speaker 2: No, but you know, five hundred years later I could
Speaker 2: see why maybe that wasn't the move. You know, Molly,
Speaker 2: what have you heard about our girl?
Speaker 3: Joan of arc Joan? Okay, A little bit of a
Speaker 3: strange one. A little bit of a strange one. I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess anybody getting visions from God is a little unusual. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but yeah, good at battle? I mean, I guess it's
Speaker 3: easy to be good at war if God is giving
Speaker 3: you the cheat codes, right, Yes, and no.
Speaker 2: We're gonna talk about which codes that God gave her
Speaker 2: and didn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it didn't end so good for her, Although
Speaker 3: I guess I don't know, if you're really getting visions
Speaker 3: from God, martyrdom isn't a tragedy for you, right.
Speaker 2: I know, although she's technically like even still now that
Speaker 2: they've admitted all there, she's still not a martyr, right.
Speaker 3: Oh, because she didn't die for her because she wasn't,
Speaker 3: so I guess martyrdom is when you die persecuted for
Speaker 3: your faith and they're not going to admit they were
Speaker 3: doing the persecuting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Interesting, Although there's like other loopholes, like there's this
Speaker 2: there's always a loose I can't remember his name, but
Speaker 2: I really like him. There's this man saint from World
Speaker 2: War Two who died in a concentration camp and he's
Speaker 2: considered a martyr of charity. They created a whole new
Speaker 2: category for him because being killed for being Charitis and
Speaker 2: hating Nazis is like not technically being killed for being Catholic,
Speaker 2: but it's like functionally being killed for being Catholic, because
Speaker 2: if you're like actually good Catholic, you theoretically are willing
Speaker 2: to die fighting at fighting Nazis and believing in charity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you were doing what Jesus wanted you to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: But now Joan of Arc didn't get martyrs. Everyone treats
Speaker 2: her as a martyr.
Speaker 4: Is she the patron Saint of France?
Speaker 2: I believe so, And she's definitely the patron saint of
Speaker 2: soldiers and the city of Orleon, But yeah, I think
Speaker 2: she's patron Saint of France. I wasn't sure I was
Speaker 2: gonna do a Joan of Arc episode. This has been
Speaker 2: on my list, my big list of maybes forever, right,
Speaker 2: because I didn't know that much about Joan of Arc
Speaker 2: coming into it. I was like, Oh, lady soldier burned
Speaker 2: at the stake had visions. That's kind of all I had.
Speaker 2: And when I first would hear most of the modern retellings,
Speaker 2: it's sort of just kind of like, oh, no, this
Speaker 2: is girl and she was in the right place at
Speaker 2: the right time or whatever, and it kind of strips
Speaker 2: her agency away. And once you dig into the story,
Speaker 2: she is a badass.
Speaker 3: I guess you gotta be pretty tenacious to get up
Speaker 3: in there and make people believe you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like she went through the hell and back to
Speaker 2: try and get people to believe her, And she's a
Speaker 2: hard sell for me, right, because, like, the big thing
Speaker 2: she did is that she's kind of the reason there's
Speaker 2: a country called France.
Speaker 3: Like not a point in her favor.
Speaker 2: I know, I don't really give a shit about France
Speaker 2: now it would have just been conquered by the English.
Speaker 2: Do I even less give a shit about you? But
Speaker 2: I don't care much about the nationalism of Western imperialist countries, right.
Speaker 2: I also don't care about royal drama. I'm not a
Speaker 2: big fan of monarchy. The fact that she put the
Speaker 2: true Air on the throne doesn't do it for me.
Speaker 2: But the questions of gender and power and magic that
Speaker 2: she brings up are really interesting to me, and so
Speaker 2: that was why I was going with at the beginning
Speaker 2: of this. And then I would just like read about
Speaker 2: like battle after battle. There's also just something where you're like, well,
Speaker 2: you're such a fucking badass. It's cool anyway, you know.
Speaker 2: A couple of years ago, I did an episode about
Speaker 2: a rather common medieval divorce practice before divorce was legalized,
Speaker 2: which was called poison your husband and now you're not
Speaker 2: married anymore.
Speaker 3: Oh, the classic divorce.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly the divorce that Christian nationalists are burreling themselves
Speaker 2: right back towards by trying to get rid of divorce.
Speaker 2: And the thing that I discovered while researching those episodes
Speaker 2: that surprised me the most was that things that I
Speaker 2: had sort of imagined were made up turned out to
Speaker 2: be very real. About the Middle Ages, there was this
Speaker 2: magical underground in medieval European cities that was made up
Speaker 2: of like astrologers and alchemists who would set up shop
Speaker 2: and sell everything from abortion to husband murder to fortune telling.
Speaker 2: And you would have like Catholic priests who were selling
Speaker 2: love potions on the side made from oil dripped over
Speaker 2: the corpses of saints. And some of those same priests
Speaker 2: were like doing black masses at night with women as altars.
Speaker 2: But I don't think they were killing the women. And
Speaker 2: just like weird sex stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a reason so much which of this
Speaker 3: medieval magic is sort of inverted Catholic, right, And it's
Speaker 3: because it was Catholic priests doing it. They're the ones
Speaker 3: who could read that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like I think the line between medieval Catholicism
Speaker 2: and like witchcrafton paganism is like a meaningless line. It
Speaker 2: obviously is a strong political and legal framework built around it,
Speaker 2: but like you're just describing the same shit and some
Speaker 2: of the people are allowed to do it. And actually,
Speaker 2: none of these priests are allowed to be doing these
Speaker 2: black masses and stuff, right, They're not supposed to be
Speaker 2: doing that. No, no, yeah, big, big big no no.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: A lot of I'm get in trouble for that one.
Speaker 2: But poor middle class and aristocratic women alike would go
Speaker 2: to these fortune tellers because women were a permanent underclass. Obviously,
Speaker 2: rich women and the nobility and shit had far more power,
Speaker 2: but they still, even to exert the power that they
Speaker 2: should theoretically have, they relied on magic. And it's a
Speaker 2: pattern that once I started noticing it, I see it
Speaker 2: more and more. And so the story of Joan of
Speaker 2: Arc isn't just the story of one woman whose visions
Speaker 2: gave her access to military command. It's also the story
Speaker 2: of a second woman, the King's mother in law, who
Speaker 2: had to work behind the scenes to wield visions and
Speaker 2: magic in order to get her cowardly son like King
Speaker 2: charge person son in law.
Speaker 3: Little boy boy King.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to put his back into the fight. She had
Speaker 2: to rely on magic to do it.
Speaker 3: So she's Nancy Reagan and the astrologer.
Speaker 5: Yes, I even vaguely get that one.
Speaker 4: I love when Joan comes up without it making sense,
Speaker 4: but it makes sense because Joni is everywhere.
Speaker 3: Things don't change.
Speaker 2: Oh, my god, is her name Joan? Her name is
Speaker 2: Joan whoa And so so there's this, right, there's this
Speaker 2: magical element. It also helps the story that Joan of
Speaker 2: Arc was a total fucking badass would wade into battle
Speaker 2: with lance and sword, taking arrows to the chest while
Speaker 2: still fighting. I had like thought maybe like they like
Speaker 2: brought her out as like a hey, look we have
Speaker 2: a weird saint to be you know, we brought a mascot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I genuinely like early on, as I was doing this research,
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, a mascot. That is like the
Speaker 2: word that I was thinking of. No, not a mascot
Speaker 2: unless the mascot was Also, I don't know the parts
Speaker 2: of football full back, the quarterback, running quarter One.
Speaker 3: Of us knows a football guy for.
Speaker 4: Sure, running back.
Speaker 2: I'm actually a little bit lying. I've ghost written two
Speaker 2: romance novels about sports, and I had to like learn
Speaker 2: so much about football and baseball in order to go
Speaker 2: straight these fucking heterosexual romance novels. I know the average
Speaker 2: height of an NFL player. It's five foot ten, shorter
Speaker 2: than I expected.
Speaker 3: Really, that is littler than I thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the publisher made me change it. The publisher was like,
Speaker 2: I want our character to be like an average NFL player,
Speaker 2: And I was like, okay, And I looked it up
Speaker 2: and it made him five foot ten. And the publisher
Speaker 2: was like, no, we can't have a love interest just
Speaker 2: less than six feet tall.
Speaker 3: We're selling a fantasy here, Margaret. Yeah, that's so funny.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Joan of Arc absolute badass, turned a like fucking
Speaker 2: losing war around, drove out English invaders and forever changed
Speaker 2: the course of history for better and worse. So Joan
Speaker 2: of Arc, your sixteenth minute starts. Now that's my wow,
Speaker 2: that's my sixteenth minute of fame.
Speaker 3: Jokes.
Speaker 4: It's very disorienting, thank you.
Speaker 2: I mean, she really was the character of the day, absolutely,
Speaker 2: and they got bored of her and tired of our
Speaker 2: justice fucking fast.
Speaker 3: God, things don't change. We've always been this way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the same people, but at different times and
Speaker 2: with more more visions. People were more open about the visions,
Speaker 2: I would say.
Speaker 3: And we didn't burn Bean down at the stake.
Speaker 2: No, we didn't. Although there's still time. We're going to
Speaker 2: start this story chronologically before we've to get to being
Speaker 2: Dad and then burn him at the stake. We're going
Speaker 2: to start it before Joan of Arc was born. We're
Speaker 2: gonna start it with a woman who is incredibly powerful
Speaker 2: in her time, but like many women, has been largely
Speaker 2: ignored by history. Her name is Yolanda of Aragon. And
Speaker 2: now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, isn't Aragon
Speaker 2: the rightful King of Gondor from Tolkien's Lord of the
Speaker 2: Rings And the answer is close, that's Aragorn. Aragon is
Speaker 2: a region in Spain. Probably more people knew it was
Speaker 2: a region in Spain than thought of Aragorn, but I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean maybe more people generally, but in terms of
Speaker 3: listeners of this show, hard to say.
Speaker 2: Fair enough no that listeners of the show would know
Speaker 2: that Ara Gorn as an r well too are whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Aragon was not a region in Spain. The funny thing
Speaker 2: that's like when you talk about the fourteen hundreds and
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, Spain, Italy, France, Like, we only talk
Speaker 2: about those countries because those are the ones that are
Speaker 2: still around. Aragon was not in Spain. Aragon was his
Speaker 2: own world spanning empire that stretched across like by being
Speaker 2: Queen of Aragon, Yolanda of Aragon was also the Queen
Speaker 2: of Sicily, which in this case meant the entire southern
Speaker 2: half of Italy, which is not a concept. People aren't
Speaker 2: Italian at this point right, and ostensibly of Jerusalem. In
Speaker 2: case you need any more reminders that the royalty of
Speaker 2: medieval Europe was transnational as fuck, and modern conceptions of
Speaker 2: nation don't really map easily onto the past, and that
Speaker 2: rich people are fucking weird. Because she lives in France, well,
Speaker 2: by the end of the story, she lives in France.
Speaker 2: She's one of the most gifted statesmen the world has
Speaker 2: ever produced, near as I can tell. She is a
Speaker 2: master of diplomacy in military matters, despite her self never
Speaker 2: holding power. She's not a queen regnant, right, She's a
Speaker 2: married to a guy. She was born in Barcelona on
Speaker 2: August eleventh, thirteen eighty one. Her father was the heir
Speaker 2: to Aragon. Her grandfather was the military guy who'd done
Speaker 2: all that conquering under the name of Aragon. Her mother
Speaker 2: was a friend woman, And to make this story really
Speaker 2: fun and confusing, her name was also Yolanda, spelled the
Speaker 2: same Yolanda of Aragon. The daughter was her parents only
Speaker 2: surviving child out of eight. Oh that's rough, yeah, like
Speaker 2: nobility won't save you from dysentery.
Speaker 3: That's a twelve percent batting average.
Speaker 2: That's not good, no, no, And it's funny because like
Speaker 2: usually I do stories, in like the eighteenth nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: and so everyone dies with tuberculosis. A lot of people
Speaker 2: are gonna die of dysentery today.
Speaker 3: That's a rough way to go, you know, especially because
Speaker 3: they hadn't invented toilets.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna shit myself to death quietly, and then
Speaker 2: Shakespeare write a play about me.
Speaker 3: I don't think it was quiet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. When her father won which is actually
Speaker 2: spelled Joan the same as but it's anyway, when one
Speaker 2: became the king of Aragon, he wanted the play I
Speaker 2: used to become the cultural center of Europe, specifically the
Speaker 2: center of the art of the troubadour no One at
Speaker 2: the time as and I love this the gay science,
Speaker 2: like fuck a king, but instead of tourneys with joustin knights,
Speaker 2: he put on poetry competitions for the same like high
Speaker 2: stakes and rewards like priceless jewels and shit.
Speaker 3: What a nerd.
Speaker 2: I know, I kind of like him, and he also
Speaker 2: like just sucks and everything, and like the women in
Speaker 2: his life take care of everything, but not just like
Speaker 2: take care of him, but like run the kingdom.
Speaker 3: And shit like that, right, because he's busy with his
Speaker 3: poetry contests.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and being like not particularly good at battle and stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, to be fair, I'm certain he's better at
Speaker 2: battle than I am.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean if we get to use okay anyway, So
Speaker 2: Yolanda grew up obsessed with books in literature and kept
Speaker 2: a massive library because she's also a nerd, and she
Speaker 2: had a lot of theological tomes, which was honestly the
Speaker 2: medieval equivalent of philosophy. And she saw the world as
Speaker 2: a magical place full of signs, and she interwove parable
Speaker 2: in fiction with real life, like, for example, like one
Speaker 2: time she's out hunting, right, because actually it turns out
Speaker 2: women hunted too. Sorry. Victorian ideas of everything we think
Speaker 2: we know about the Middle Ages is because of the
Speaker 2: fucking Victorians. They like came up with like renfars and
Speaker 2: like imagined a weird Victorian world of like they like
Speaker 2: reversed all of their annoying social norms back on like
Speaker 2: the fourteen hundreds, Which is not to say the fourteen
Speaker 2: hundreds were like good or a like nice time to
Speaker 2: be alive or a woman, but it's not what the
Speaker 2: Victorian's claim, and so it's not like what we usually
Speaker 2: presume anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the fanfit was not correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. She's out there hunting because she can, because
Speaker 2: she likes hunting and wants to kill things and eat them.
Speaker 2: But the dogs scare a rabbit out of a bush,
Speaker 2: and the rabbit jumps up in her lap, and I think, like,
Speaker 2: while she's on a horse, which is pretty impressive, rabbit
Speaker 2: that's a jump. Yeah, And so she calls off the
Speaker 2: dogs and she's like, I have a cute rabbit. This
Speaker 2: is as cool. And they go and look in the
Speaker 2: bush that the rabbit came out of, and they all
Speaker 2: find a stone, and on the stone there appears to
Speaker 2: be a marking. I assume it's just like wet in
Speaker 2: a certain pattern, you know, like kind of like a
Speaker 2: Jesus on the toast kind of thing, you know. And
Speaker 2: they find a marking that looks so much like Mother
Speaker 2: Mary holding baby Jesus, just as she was holding the rabbit.
Speaker 2: So they built a shrine on the site.
Speaker 3: Fair enough.
Speaker 2: One story in particular was important to her, and it
Speaker 2: was this sort of politicizing of an old fairy tale
Speaker 2: called the Tale of the Melosine, which is about a
Speaker 2: half fairy woman who was sent by God and I
Speaker 2: thought about making this a four parter and now subjecting
Speaker 2: you to that entire story, but then I didn't. There's
Speaker 2: like a half snake lady and if you look at
Speaker 2: her while she's changing, she'll leave you. And it's actually
Speaker 2: very common thing. There's like a Russian folk tale that
Speaker 2: I read recently and has the same Anyway, this part
Speaker 2: is important to understand that she's into all this stuff
Speaker 2: because later she's going to make use of signs and
Speaker 2: portents for political and military conflict and succeed at it.
Speaker 2: But there's no reason to doubt that even as I
Speaker 2: think she's making up like prophecies and then attributing them
Speaker 2: to someone else, she's still not necessarily doing it cynically,
Speaker 2: Like I think she believes the stuff that she's talking about.
Speaker 2: And that part is just interesting to me because a
Speaker 2: lot of I think we're all bad at looking at
Speaker 2: the Middle Ages of anywhere in the world because we
Speaker 2: keep trying to look at it. It's like, yes, we're
Speaker 2: all the same people back then, but we lived in
Speaker 2: like a different sense of reality.
Speaker 3: You know, magic was more real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, people being like oh yeah, that rock
Speaker 2: totally yep, And that's a good place for a shrine,
Speaker 2: and then if the shne works out, then you're like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, we don't have any weird poor tents that
Speaker 2: came and change the way that we think. Instead, we
Speaker 2: have ads.
Speaker 3: I mean people still make pilgrimages to a lot of
Speaker 3: those shrines. I mean they're still there. There's still very
Speaker 3: best in people's lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would totally go to them. But we do
Speaker 2: have ads.
Speaker 3: Oh we're going to an ad. That's what's happening now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, we're going to ads now. Yeah, ed,
Speaker 5: we're back. And if you believe in gambling, like those
Speaker 5: ads might have told you.
Speaker 3: Wow, gamblers love signs too. Gamblers are always looking for
Speaker 3: a sign.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: And it's like understandable. I'm not trying to shit on
Speaker 2: people who make either of these types of decisions. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so her mom, Queen Yolande, not to be confused with
Speaker 2: our secondary main character, Queen Ulande Land. Yeah, yeah, Yolanda junior.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 2: Yolanda senior did more work of ruling than her husband did,
Speaker 2: who is probably epileptic and was much more concerned with
Speaker 2: poetry than administration. So young Yolande Yulandi Junior learned early
Speaker 2: on how women can rule from behind the throne. And
Speaker 2: now we won't mention her mom again. So if I
Speaker 2: say Yulande, I only mean Junior.
Speaker 3: Turned into a Disney movie real quick. No Mom, the
Speaker 3: mom is gone gone. Yeah, sorry mom, never to be
Speaker 3: mentioned again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not definitely, not around. Oh god, So young Yolande
Speaker 2: existed politically pretty much as just get married off. So
Speaker 2: she was married off when she was like six. She
Speaker 2: wasn't married when she was six. When she was like six,
Speaker 2: she was betrothed to the ten year old king of Sicily,
Speaker 2: who was French. Because national borders have always been about
Speaker 2: controlling the movement of poor people and not rich people.
Speaker 2: They get married once they're both adults. There's so much
Speaker 2: back and forth here that I'm not going to subject
Speaker 2: you to. One of my least favorite things is the
Speaker 2: doings of nobility by adults.
Speaker 3: You mean like twelve.
Speaker 2: No, actually she's nineteen, so he's like twenty four. She's
Speaker 2: a fucking old maid. She's Yolande's senior by that time.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Not. Actually she doesn't have kids. She's gonna end up
Speaker 2: with kids anyway. By all accounts. She actually starts off Okay,
Speaker 2: I said I wasn't gonna do it, back and forth.
Speaker 2: She actually starts off being like, fuck this guy, I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna marry him, and I'm gonna like exert some autonomy,
Speaker 2: and that was kind of I think, just testing to
Speaker 2: prove that she could. But in the end she loves
Speaker 2: him and they are a love match for each other,
Speaker 2: or they at least like each other a lot, and
Speaker 2: she's now one of the richest motherfuckers in Europe. She
Speaker 2: heads off to like whichever of her like million castles
Speaker 2: she feels like hanging out at at a given time,
Speaker 2: mostly in central France, because the king of Sicily doesn't
Speaker 2: actually control Sicily because of the weird shit. Her fashion
Speaker 2: is so decadent that priests give sermons complaining about earthly
Speaker 2: vanity everywhere that she goes, and the husband is always
Speaker 2: away trying to retake his kingdom, and so she's ruling
Speaker 2: a decent chunk of France in his absence. Now I
Speaker 2: run into even more of a problem. I love the
Speaker 2: Middle Ages, helmets, swords, armor, weird theology, fairy tales, dresses,
Speaker 2: peasant uprisings. Don't love dysentery, but it's interesting. But I
Speaker 2: fucking hate nobility. I hate them politically. I also hate
Speaker 2: them as a history writer. I don't give a shit
Speaker 2: about so and so married so and so, and then
Speaker 2: I had a third distant claim on the kingdom or whatever.
Speaker 2: But we're gonna have to do some of it in
Speaker 2: order to understand Jon of Arc and it kind of
Speaker 2: works out because there's a guy called the Mad King.
Speaker 2: So this gets Game of Thrones. Y.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say Game of Thrones.
Speaker 2: Honestly, both Tolkien and Martin, I think took a lot
Speaker 2: from the One hundred Year War, which is what all
Speaker 2: of this is going to take place during. One thing
Speaker 2: you have to know is that there's this guy named
Speaker 2: King Charles the sixth. He is the King of As
Speaker 2: with that nice classic French name Charles, and he's not
Speaker 2: living in the same reality as everyone else, which is
Speaker 2: saying something like he he's the mad King. He's he
Speaker 2: would almost certainly by modern sense, be schizophrenic.
Speaker 3: Right, Is he the one that had the horrible shaped head?
Speaker 3: One of the Charles has had a very bad shaped head.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. They all have big noses, is
Speaker 2: the only thing that I know about how they look.
Speaker 2: Both him and his son are like notable for their noses.
Speaker 3: And it's like if your official portrait as the king,
Speaker 3: you look kind of messed up. You know, that boy
Speaker 3: looked terrible, you know, look awful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. One time he went into a psychotic
Speaker 2: state and killed five of his own men while they
Speaker 2: were I think out hunting. He just like, ah, like
Speaker 2: sorted killing guys, you know, And then they had to
Speaker 2: like restrain him, and he would spend his time wandering
Speaker 2: around saying he wasn't king, and his name was George,
Speaker 2: and he was made of glass and if anyone touched
Speaker 2: him he'd shatter.
Speaker 3: Right, he hit the glass delusion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, old glass man, incredible and like, you know what, overall,
Speaker 2: thinking you're not king probably better than thinking you're king.
Speaker 2: One of the better delusions. Yeah, he was fairly beloved.
Speaker 2: He didn't get the nickname the mad until later when
Speaker 2: they were talking, like after he was dead.
Speaker 3: So I guess he only accidentally killed a bunch of
Speaker 3: guys just the once. If people actually liked him.
Speaker 2: Everyone who wasn't Jewish, Okay, it took me a while
Speaker 2: because everyone was like, oh everyone who was belove blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. And then when I was like following like
Speaker 2: the eighth rabbit hole, down the eighth rabbit hole. And
Speaker 2: I think I was even like how antisemitic were these motherfuckers?
Speaker 2: I can't remember exactly, but I was like I went looking.
Speaker 2: He kicked all the Jews out of France.
Speaker 3: Not great.
Speaker 2: This is like one of like three times that's happened.
Speaker 2: So he sucks. But I bet he didn't do it
Speaker 2: while he thought he was George.
Speaker 3: George wouldn't have done that.
Speaker 2: I know. George is just a nice man made out
Speaker 2: of clafe us. His wife is a beau from the
Speaker 2: backwater of Bavaria, was an essence the queen regnant like
Speaker 2: it was like her and the king's uncles like fighting
Speaker 2: it out for power while King Charles was busy locked
Speaker 2: up raving and they start arguing. Soon enough they're arguing
Speaker 2: with like spears and shit, which is to say, there's
Speaker 2: a civil war. France was already in a war, one
Speaker 2: hundred year war, which they call that instead of the
Speaker 2: less catchy one hundred and sixteen year, four month, three
Speaker 2: week and four day war.
Speaker 3: Well, they're not counting the breaks they took.
Speaker 2: They did dig a lot of breaks, which makes sense
Speaker 2: because it's really hard to fight a war for one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixteen years straight.
Speaker 3: And you have to walk to war back then, so
Speaker 3: it just took longer.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you really did. Like some people got horses,
Speaker 2: but they had to go at walking pace.
Speaker 3: Because most people were just walking there. I think about
Speaker 3: them all the time we're watching Game of Thrones. It's
Speaker 3: like like the battle maybe lasts days and days and
Speaker 3: it's horrible and everyone has festering wounds. But like you
Speaker 3: walked there for like six weeks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just robbing everyone as you go and being like,
Speaker 2: don't worry. The state is what protects you from banditry.
Speaker 2: Now give me all of your food and I'm going
Speaker 2: to kill you, not.
Speaker 3: Or just and sand Yeah, we at least you won't
Speaker 3: need the food.
Speaker 2: Then that's true. It's a good point, you know, saving
Speaker 2: the country side. They're traveling around, saving the countryside from starving,
Speaker 2: is what they're doing. So now France has a civil
Speaker 2: war on top of a hundred year war. And this
Speaker 2: is the annoying name of the Armagnac Burgundian Civil War,
Speaker 2: which is only annoying to me because I don't like
Speaker 2: pronouncing French names too many syllables.
Speaker 3: Is Armagnac, the name of that like fake liquor that
Speaker 3: one of the guys on the Sopranos got tricked into
Speaker 3: investing in. Probably what am I thinking.
Speaker 2: Of the way I remembered how to pronounce this word
Speaker 2: is that it kind of ends in cognac or rhymes
Speaker 2: with whatever. The House of Orleans are the Armagnacs, and
Speaker 2: the House of Burgundy are the Burgundians. It was a
Speaker 2: war between two of the king's other brothers, but it
Speaker 2: was also about political and economic systems and shit. The
Speaker 2: Armagnacs were pro French culturally, and they were like, yay,
Speaker 2: we like God, agriculture and feudalism, the.
Speaker 3: Three pillars of society.
Speaker 2: But the Burgundians were pro English or English culture, and
Speaker 2: we're like, we like pastoralism and sheep and artisans and
Speaker 2: middle classes and cities. And it's interesting because like those
Speaker 2: don't have to line up, you know how like modern
Speaker 2: politics is like sometimes you'll meet people who have just
Speaker 2: like grab bag politics, you know, like modern tankies right
Speaker 2: where they're like, oh, we like fucking this dictator and
Speaker 2: hate this other dictator, and we like support both Russia
Speaker 2: and Palestine. You know, it's like random ass fucking politics.
Speaker 3: The average American has completely incoherent politics.
Speaker 2: That's how I feel about this too, right, because like,
Speaker 2: pastoralism and sheep are not how you build a strong city.
Speaker 2: Like agriculture, the sheep can't even live in the city. No,
Speaker 2: agriculture is how you build big cities. But whatever. The
Speaker 2: Burgundians are usually painted as the villain in this story,
Speaker 2: and they definitely started this war by having the Duke
Speaker 2: of Orleans assassinated in the streets, and then their like
Speaker 2: defense about like did you kill that man, was yes,
Speaker 2: we killed him. He was a tyrant at least an
Speaker 2: honest yeah, fair enough. The Burgundians are not necessarily any better.
Speaker 2: They had like a populist vibe to them, but as
Speaker 2: we're all learning right now, that does not mean actual
Speaker 2: class loyalty to the working class. They have like a
Speaker 2: kind of like a fuck the nobles thing, but they
Speaker 2: themselves are all nobility too, And.
Speaker 3: It's not like they're trying to abolish the monarchy.
Speaker 2: No, they want a different, different ruler of it. And and
Speaker 2: they I mean, you know, on some level they're like, well,
Speaker 2: we want Burgundy to be a separate thing from France,
Speaker 2: And soon enough they're siding with the British, and no
Speaker 2: one likes people who side with a foreign invasion, and
Speaker 2: they like totally do anti populas shit too. I spent
Speaker 2: a long time trying to be like, wait a second,
Speaker 2: or the Burgundians the good guys here, And the answer
Speaker 2: is no, there's no good.
Speaker 3: Guys, no good guys trying to become king.
Speaker 2: No, just really doesn't happen. Sorry, Aragorn, you're a fantasy character.
Speaker 2: So Yolanda, the lady whose story we're gonna follow through
Speaker 2: all this, Her and her husband are on the Armagnac side,
Speaker 2: and their daughter Marie is going to marry the dolphin,
Speaker 2: Daulphin Dolphin. I'm gonna call them the dolphin because dolphin. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's the fancy French word for crown prince. And if
Speaker 2: it sounds like dolphin to you one, it's because I
Speaker 2: just called it dolphin because I'm bad at pronouncing French dauphin.
Speaker 2: The defont is. It's not a coincidence. Did you know this?
Speaker 2: Have you heard of this? The default thing?
Speaker 3: Wait? So it's etymologically related to dolphins.
Speaker 2: What us the word for dolphin? Because some guy with
Speaker 2: a dolphin on his coat of arms a long ass
Speaker 2: time before had made a deal with a French king
Speaker 2: in exchange for having the word for crown prince become dolphin.
Speaker 3: Oh so the arrangement was explicitly about the word. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a man with vision. That's a man with vision.
Speaker 3: I know he like sold either his title or his manner.
Speaker 3: I had a hard time figuring it out because I
Speaker 3: didn't want to get too lost in the sidetrack, you know.
Speaker 3: And in exchange for hundreds of years, the royal heir
Speaker 3: was named the Dolphin, okay, which is like respect Middle
Speaker 3: Ages for being fucking weird.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: He's not asking for jewels or lands. He's like, no,
Speaker 3: I want everyone to have to say this dumb thing
Speaker 3: that makes them think of me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think he got paid too, but like he like,
Speaker 2: I think he was like giving up titles in land
Speaker 2: or something. I think he kind of like got eminent domained,
Speaker 2: you know. But someone listening knows this really well, and
Speaker 2: I'm not it. I'm not that person. So Marie marries Charles,
Speaker 2: the sixth third son, Charles, who is not actually the
Speaker 2: Dolphin yet. I'm just gonna say dolphin. But don't worry,
Speaker 2: a lot of people are going to die in France
Speaker 2: especially nobles, and so he'll get a chance, much like
Speaker 2: he has a chance to take advantage of these sweet,
Speaker 2: sweet deals if they buy a time machine and go
Speaker 2: back in time and advertise to the dufall.
Speaker 3: Alrightp Charles, you would have loved chumba casino?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, who doesn't?
Speaker 3: And we're back.
Speaker 2: All right, you've got a hundred year war and you've
Speaker 2: got a civil war. Why not have an invasion by
Speaker 2: a Shakespeare character.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're already doing two wars. I think rule
Speaker 3: of threes makes it funnier to have a third one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to be fair, this is more back. It's
Speaker 2: almost like the restarting the hundred years War is like
Speaker 2: kind of on a break, you know. And then Henry
Speaker 2: the Fifth is like, and this is smart of Henry
Speaker 2: the Fifth. He's like, oh, they're in a civil war, Well,
Speaker 2: that seems like a really good time to go fuck
Speaker 2: them all up. And I've played enough risk. I know
Speaker 2: that this is true.
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe he was just trying to help them
Speaker 3: resolve their differences by realizing that they had a common enemy.
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. If if he was in charge,
Speaker 2: no one would be fighting with each other. That is
Speaker 2: like the way that people defend the idea of the
Speaker 2: modern state. They're like, well, you know, one guy's in charge,
Speaker 2: so now we have peace. So he invades, and both
Speaker 2: sides immediately are like, who can suck up to him
Speaker 2: the fastest and most effectively and get the English on
Speaker 2: their side. So once again there's no good guys in
Speaker 2: this story. Both sides offer him royal marriages and shit,
Speaker 2: and he doesn't take either because he looks at this
Speaker 2: as a clear sign of weakness and is like, oh,
Speaker 2: I could fucking take you both. You're both fucking just
Speaker 2: rolling over before I even get there.
Speaker 3: Of all you have is daughters, Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fortunately a daughter of a non normal daughter of
Speaker 2: France is going to kick his fucking ass. In August
Speaker 2: fourteen fifteen, he and twelve thousand of his closest friends
Speaker 2: land in France. They take the city of Harflee, which
Speaker 2: you know, about half the things I looked up how
Speaker 2: to pronounce, and then sometimes I forgot so Harflee and
Speaker 2: he takes the city at great cost, dysentery fucks them
Speaker 2: up worse than the enemy, and then you got one
Speaker 2: of the most fun battles in all medieval history. Have
Speaker 2: you ever heard of the Great historic Battle of Agincore.
Speaker 3: My high school history teacher says that I should say, yes.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, then you already know it, so we'll just
Speaker 2: skip over it.
Speaker 3: No no, no, no for the listener, for the listener.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally totally. I actually I knew about
Speaker 2: this battle, but I wouldn't have remembered his name. Like
Speaker 2: names come in and out of my head within like
Speaker 2: next week, I won't remember the name of this battle.
Speaker 2: This is a slaughter. Henry the Fifth has nine hundred
Speaker 2: knights and five thousand long bowmen, and the French didn't
Speaker 2: really fuck around with longbows. It's like an English cultural thing, right,
Speaker 2: the French are hunting with crossbows.
Speaker 3: When this was kind of the time period where they're
Speaker 3: still sort of working out which one is better, right,
Speaker 3: Like these are sort of newer technologies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then, like my understanding, like the English longbow
Speaker 2: is like a fucking thing. It is like you are
Speaker 2: training your whole life to have the arms and chests
Speaker 2: and shoulders to pull this thing back. It is an
Speaker 2: incredibly powerful weapon that is incredibly specialized, and you need
Speaker 2: like a culture built around it in order to make
Speaker 2: use of it in battle. At least according to the
Speaker 2: far too many hours of YouTube I've watched put on
Speaker 2: by probably terrible people. I have seen so many videos
Speaker 2: of can the English longbow penetrate a French breastplate?
Speaker 3: Well, at least we have the answers to these questions.
Speaker 2: We don't. This is the best part. It's because whoever
Speaker 2: makes these videos is either siding with the longbow or
Speaker 2: the armor, and you can tell ahead of time. It's
Speaker 2: so annoying.
Speaker 3: We need a double blind study.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, but we certainly know what wins
Speaker 2: five thousand longbowmen versus like kind of the entire French nobility.
Speaker 2: The French did not fuck around with longbows. They hunted
Speaker 2: a crossbows. They had the numbers. They had at least
Speaker 2: fourteen thousand, easily twenty five thousand people coming up on
Speaker 2: like six thousand, right, six to ten thousand French soldiers died,
Speaker 2: most of them knights aka the nobility. It's possible way
Speaker 2: more than that number of French people died because they
Speaker 2: literally didn't count the non noble dead.
Speaker 3: I mean, at that point, how do you count any
Speaker 3: of them? Like, how are you cleaning this up?
Speaker 2: I mean, these are the most in charge people in
Speaker 2: the country. So like they're the only people that there's
Speaker 2: like records about right now. They're all gone. The English
Speaker 2: lost one hundred and twelve people, six hundred total people
Speaker 2: if you include like man at arms and you know,
Speaker 2: trash like that. And it's because the English just stood
Speaker 2: there and shot arrows at nights stuck in a field
Speaker 2: of mud.
Speaker 3: That's rough. I mean, I guess if you have the
Speaker 3: longer range, if you're you know, ranged weaponry against ranged weaponry,
Speaker 3: and yours go further.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's ranged weaponry versus knights on horseback.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They didn't have a chance.
Speaker 2: No, they absolutely did not. And I wish it was
Speaker 2: this easy to wipe out. If all the billionaires and
Speaker 2: sons of billionaires formed an elite squad of soldiers, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't be sad, That's all I'm gonna say, especially if
Speaker 2: I get longbows and they only get swords. I don't know.
Speaker 2: This is the like, don't fuck with longbow's battle. This
Speaker 2: is like what's a nor okay, so like a webu
Speaker 2: is Japan and norwbu's Norway. What's the like generic Western
Speaker 2: Europe Middle Ages boo ingle boo. Well, I don't like
Speaker 2: the sound of that, no one should.
Speaker 3: Are there people who are sort of just that have
Speaker 3: that sort of waboo fascination with Anglo Saxons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen a lot of their videos and it's
Speaker 2: a terrible shame because I really like medieval weapons. But anyway,
Speaker 2: this battle, it just fucks everything up.
Speaker 3: We just don't send our rich boys to war like
Speaker 3: we used to, I know.
Speaker 2: And it's actually just like the one defense you can
Speaker 2: make of feudalism is it was like the peasantry isn't
Speaker 2: going to war at this point, like by and large,
Speaker 2: I mean, they're getting murdered in the war by both
Speaker 2: sides who are just bandits arning around killing them and
Speaker 2: taking all their stuff.
Speaker 3: But they didn't have to walk there.
Speaker 2: I know, they could just stay and die at home.
Speaker 3: Our lords used to actually get out there and try it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally. Meanwhile, the heir to the throne of
Speaker 2: France dies of dysentery, the next heir dies of an
Speaker 2: ear infection, and so young Charles, he's like fourteen years old,
Speaker 2: is suddenly the daufont.
Speaker 3: So he was third, he was third, and now he's first. Yep.
Speaker 2: And he does not live with his parents. He lives
Speaker 2: with his bride to be's family, because he's a total
Speaker 2: mama's boy, but not to his mom, but to Yolande,
Speaker 2: who actually pays attention to him his mom by all accounts,
Speaker 2: although she's like the villain and the story, so everyone
Speaker 2: says she sucks, but it sounds like she sucks, right.
Speaker 2: Where's Yolanda who's actually paid attention to him and been
Speaker 2: nice and has been raising him ever since he was
Speaker 2: betrothed to her daughter Marie, So he's living over with
Speaker 2: mom in law. Charles the Seventh's actual mom at this
Speaker 2: point is a boom has gone traitor. Henry the fifth
Speaker 2: is back, and the Burgundian faction has switched sides to
Speaker 2: supporting the English invasion, and the Queen non regnant has
Speaker 2: switched sides to supporting the Burgundians, so she's now supporting
Speaker 2: the English invasion. And since her husband is usually locked
Speaker 2: up somewhere believing he was the king, the Defont is
Speaker 2: now kind of the ruler of France, but so is
Speaker 2: the wife, and so are all these other factions, and like,
Speaker 2: no one really knows who's in charge.
Speaker 3: They didn't have a twenty fifth Amendment, they didn't have
Speaker 3: a plan for this.
Speaker 2: No no. They were like, hey, step down, and he
Speaker 2: was like, I can totally do it. Let me just
Speaker 2: debate the Henry the fifth. It's gonna be totally fine.
Speaker 2: And then he was like, I'm made of glass, give
Speaker 2: me some ice cream. But since Dad was still technically king,
Speaker 2: whenever he like wasn't locked up, he would do things
Speaker 2: be like aha, I'm not crazy, Let's go off and
Speaker 2: do this incredibly bad idea military excursion that has no
Speaker 2: strategic value and get everyone killed. So it like wasn't
Speaker 2: good for France. Henry the fifth has reinvaded and just
Speaker 2: fucking things up, just wrecking the place. Yolanda is trying
Speaker 2: desperately to end the civil war, like is just trying
Speaker 2: to get Hey, aren't we all not English? Can we
Speaker 2: just fucking get along please and kick out the English?
Speaker 2: But neither side will agree on terms. When the Burgundians
Speaker 2: finally take Paris, the people of Paris are overjoyed and
Speaker 2: riotous and do a lot of wealth redistribution. They're chanting
Speaker 2: things like death, death, the town is ours, kill them all,
Speaker 2: kill them all.
Speaker 3: Maybe it sounds fancier in French.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sounds great. I don't know, I mean terrible. It
Speaker 2: is terrible. We should redistribute the wealth.
Speaker 3: I mean, it doesn't rhyme.
Speaker 2: That's true, that's true. I like this chante because it
Speaker 2: brings to mind one of my old favorite sayings. Every
Speaker 2: now and then, the poor supposed to rise up and
Speaker 2: kill all the rich people. It's the only good part
Speaker 2: about being poor.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like how forest fires are necessary for
Speaker 3: certain seeds to.
Speaker 2: Germinate, right exactly, the tree of liberty, et cetera.
Speaker 3: I hate to derailize as we're getting to the sacking
Speaker 3: of Paris, but every time this quote comes up, I
Speaker 3: have to say, the only time I've ever heard someone
Speaker 3: say that, like in real life, in person, with sincerity,
Speaker 3: about the tree of liberty, water with the blood of tyrants, this, that,
Speaker 3: and the other. During the insurrection, there were no porter potties,
Speaker 3: uh January sixth right that there was no opportunity to
Speaker 3: use the restroom in a safe and clean way. But
Speaker 3: there is a large bush on the Capitol lawn that
Speaker 3: the bush, I think, hides like an electrical box, like
Speaker 3: a big box where the electricity lives, you know, And
Speaker 3: so the bush hides that. So that looks very fancy.
Speaker 3: But on January sixth, it was a bathroom, and I
Speaker 3: saw a man pissing in this bush. He was so
Speaker 3: big that you could get inside of it. He's in
Speaker 3: the bush and he's pissing, and he is getting a
Speaker 3: little bit of pea on his shoes as he looks
Speaker 3: around to make sure everyone hears him say this as
Speaker 3: he's pissing, and he's saying, you know, the tree of
Speaker 3: liberty is water with the blood of tyrants, like as
Speaker 3: he's pissing on his own shoes.
Speaker 2: Hell. Yeah, Also it means his urine is the blood
Speaker 2: of tyrants. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't think he quite got it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I loved because as soon as that insurrection happened,
Speaker 2: and you know, right away the right wing was like
Speaker 2: it was Antifa and like immediately or like no, there
Speaker 2: would have been medics, there would have been like press contacts,
Speaker 2: there would have been fucking poor to potties. We know
Speaker 2: how to throw a riot, Like.
Speaker 3: There would not have been middle aged people rubbing raw
Speaker 3: onions on their eyes.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: There's a homeopathic remedy for to your guests.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so we're sacking Paris, we're sacking parents.
Speaker 2: So they're sacking Paris and the Burgundians are no better.
Speaker 2: It's out with the old boss, in with the new boss,
Speaker 2: and the defam is whisked away from mob violence in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night, and Paris has fallen. Sixteen
Speaker 2: hundred Armagnacs are killed by the Burgundians in Paris during
Speaker 2: the cleansing of Paris, which is a sketchy word for
Speaker 2: a bad thing. The mad King he's still in Paris
Speaker 2: because none of this affects him. He's like, oh, welcome back,
Speaker 2: honey to his wife. Who comes, you know? Or he's
Speaker 2: maybe like, I don't know. My name is George. Who
Speaker 2: are you? What's going on? Right?
Speaker 3: Like George is not in danger here, He's just George.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why would anyone mess with George? Old George? What
Speaker 2: a nice guy? What's you're Jewish? Which case he hates you?
Speaker 2: You have to get out of the country. And after
Speaker 2: the cleansing of Paris and Paris has fallen to the
Speaker 2: English and the Burgundians, Yolando of Aragon is functionally in
Speaker 2: charge of the Armagnac side of the war and of
Speaker 2: protecting the Dufont. The Burgundians, including the Dufont's actual mom.
Speaker 2: They're like, hey, give us our kid, the Dufont.
Speaker 3: Oh, now you want your third son back now that
Speaker 3: you realize he's valuable.
Speaker 2: Basically, that's what Yolanda writes back, basically says no, and
Speaker 2: we have the letter right because one of the cool
Speaker 2: things is that, like a lot of times when I
Speaker 2: talk about shit from like even one hundred years ago,
Speaker 2: it's like, I don't know, this is what we think happened.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of records of a lot of this
Speaker 2: because they were writing a lot of this down. Yolanda
Speaker 2: writes back and is like, no, you'll drive him mad
Speaker 2: like his father or turn him English like you. So
Speaker 2: if you want him, come and get him. Sick burn Yolanda,
Speaker 2: I know. And it's funny because she's very like, come
Speaker 2: and get him. But she is overall a peacemaker. She's
Speaker 2: like pretty quickly follows us up with like you want
Speaker 2: to talk terms, like what's going on? You know, like
Speaker 2: how can we end this war? She's like genuinely a
Speaker 2: really good statesman, Like she's good at this.
Speaker 3: But I think, like mom to mom, she was like
Speaker 3: you didn't want this boy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. The Burgundians cemented their alliance with England by
Speaker 2: marrying someone to Henry the Fifth, declaring Henry the fifth,
Speaker 2: the true heir of the mad king, which actually just
Speaker 2: continues to prove that they don't give a shit about
Speaker 2: young Charles the defont right. They're like, fine, you're out.
Speaker 2: We have a new heir, Henry the Fifth is now
Speaker 2: the heir.
Speaker 3: That's not how that works.
Speaker 2: Not according to the hours I've spent playing Crusader Kings two,
Speaker 2: the most annoying strategy game in the world, because you
Speaker 2: can't send armies unless you marry your daughter off to someone.
Speaker 3: First, wait, whose daughter did they send him?
Speaker 2: Oh god, I had it written in the script and
Speaker 2: them was like, I don't care someone's he marries someone.
Speaker 2: And England and Burgundy now control the northern half of France,
Speaker 2: and the Default controls the southern half, which is the
Speaker 2: poorer half and not the capital I think, aka, not
Speaker 2: the half you want to control of France. So the
Speaker 2: Default he's like young, but he's like an adult now
Speaker 2: and he's mad, so he tricks and kills the Duke
Speaker 2: of Burgundy. He's like, hey, let's meet on a bridge
Speaker 2: where no one can ambush each other and just talk
Speaker 2: it out. Okay, we'll figure it out. Because the Duke
Speaker 2: is like his uncle or some shit or a cousin
Speaker 2: or whatever the fuck you.
Speaker 3: Know, they're all cousins for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so he's like, ah, don't worry, no one
Speaker 2: can ambu and then ambushes him and then kills the
Speaker 2: Duke of Burgundy. And this does not make anything better.
Speaker 2: So now both dukes of the original leaders of both
Speaker 2: sides of the Civil War are dead, and it does
Speaker 2: not end the war. However, this assassination means that what's
Speaker 2: happening in real life matches the plot of that fairy
Speaker 2: tale about the half snake lady I was telling you
Speaker 2: about forty minutes ago. Okay, the fairy tale that Yolanda
Speaker 2: liked had a displaced air who killed his own cousin
Speaker 2: and then was wandering the forests of southern France.
Speaker 3: So now she thinks a prophecy is coming.
Speaker 2: If only a magical woman with visions from God would
Speaker 2: come and rescue the Deafont, just like in the story.
Speaker 3: Oh so she's primed and ready.
Speaker 2: Yes, Also she believes this as far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: there's no reason to believe she doesn't. But she's also
Speaker 2: making it happen.
Speaker 3: But that's how magic works, right.
Speaker 2: I genuinely believe, So yes, yeah, so if only he
Speaker 2: were to meet Joan of Arc to tie up some
Speaker 2: political loose ends before we introduce our actual hero. Henry
Speaker 2: the Fifth shits himself to death with dysentery in fourteen
Speaker 2: twenty two. Rip Yeah, And a few months later, Mad
Speaker 2: Charles the sixth dies after getting a cold while he's
Speaker 2: out hunting. Or maybe he ate poisonous mushrooms. By mistake,
Speaker 2: if you read like most things, I wasn't gonna go
Speaker 2: read a book about the guy because he's not the
Speaker 2: main character or the secondary character of the story, right,
Speaker 2: But I read a lot about him anyway. I read
Speaker 2: a lot of articles and shit, and most of the
Speaker 2: articles are like and then he died, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: when a king dies, you fucking say how. It's because
Speaker 2: we don't know.
Speaker 3: I was like, even if they said how, it's like
Speaker 3: they were just guessing, Like was it like Zachary Tyler.
Speaker 3: They're like, oh, he died from eating a bowlful of cherries,
Speaker 3: and it's like, no, he probably for sure did not.
Speaker 3: That's probably not what happened. Wait, who's that one of
Speaker 3: the presidents?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Okay, Like he was having too many cherries and cold
Speaker 3: milk and it gave him a bad tumming and he died,
Speaker 3: was it? Tyler? But it's like that's probably not why.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's a way that people died. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so yeah, I mean they can say he died from whatever,
Speaker 3: but they don't know. They're making that up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe he was made out of glass and someone
Speaker 2: touched him.
Speaker 3: I don't know, he shattered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one chat and one shattered.
Speaker 4: Zachary Taylor. Zachary Taylor, the twelfth president. Yeah, okay, cherries
Speaker 4: himself through cherries.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean if I thought I was made of glass,
Speaker 3: I would not get on a horse. No, you're kidding.
Speaker 2: Meat. Well, maybe he turned to glass. Maybe he wasn't
Speaker 2: in glass mode and then he like turned into glass mode.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: It says he died five days after eating cherries and
Speaker 4: milk of like cholera and gi issues. I'm gonna say
Speaker 4: it wasn't the cherries.
Speaker 2: Just super lactose intolerant.
Speaker 3: It was probably the fact that he just lived on
Speaker 3: a swamp and they didn't have like sewage.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm gonna say because he was the twelfth president
Speaker 4: of the United States and men just used to die.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's this whole thing that's fatal called being
Speaker 2: born before antibiotics.
Speaker 3: You know, that's what I'm saying. People just used to die. Yeah,
Speaker 3: people used to just have a lot of diarrhea.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't wait. I mean, I'll be dead, but
Speaker 2: I can't wait till a couple hundred years from now.
Speaker 2: People say the same thing about like, oh man, the
Speaker 2: twenty first century, I remember when people just die of cancer,
Speaker 2: just like, yeah, some of their cells would do something
Speaker 2: weird and then they'd all die. Like Jesus Christ, how
Speaker 2: did anything get done? Well, that's one of my only
Speaker 2: like hope for the future things, because I because whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 2: So the throne of France goes to the infant Henry
Speaker 2: the sixth, at least the like Paris side of it, right,
Speaker 2: and the Daupont is now ostensibly the king of France,
Speaker 2: but he has no power, he has no crown, and
Speaker 2: he becomes Charles the seventh. And I'm gonna keep calling
Speaker 2: them deaufall mostly in the script, I think, because this fun,
Speaker 2: I know. And besides, like numbers are all the same
Speaker 2: thing to me, Like six and seven are the same number.
Speaker 2: So Charles the sixth and Charles the seventh are the
Speaker 2: same person until you name them like the Glass King
Speaker 2: and the child Dolphin. Now I'm like, oh, I know
Speaker 2: who I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: Now I get it. Now I'm with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is part why I sucked at history in
Speaker 2: high school.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not our fault. They kept naming the
Speaker 3: guys the same stuff.
Speaker 2: I know. I know, at least this time they actually
Speaker 2: were like, he was born Charles, Charles the seventh was
Speaker 2: born Charles, you know right.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like a regnal name, because like, it's hard
Speaker 3: enough that I got to learn one name for a guy.
Speaker 3: Now he's got three. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: It's like when your friends are like, hey, message me
Speaker 2: on Instagram and I'm like, I can't remember you change
Speaker 2: your Instagram handle once a week or your signal handle,
Speaker 2: like it's an emoji. I'm not remembering emoji instead of
Speaker 2: your name. That's not happening.
Speaker 3: No, I'm having whole conversations with people that I'm too
Speaker 3: afraid to admit I don't know who you are.
Speaker 2: I know, or like you see your old friends and
Speaker 2: then you're like hello their Instagram handle and they're like,
Speaker 2: do you know my actual name? And I'm like I
Speaker 2: used to, but there's only a room in my head
Speaker 2: for one name for you.
Speaker 3: That's oupsec Margaret. If the police ask you, you can't
Speaker 3: even tell them. I know, I know.
Speaker 2: I'm just laying the groundwork now for the fact that
Speaker 2: I have a terrible memory. I'm gonna be like interviewed
Speaker 2: by that and I'll be like, you want to hear
Speaker 2: about something from the fourteenth century, And they'll be like, no,
Speaker 2: where were you three weeks ago? And I'm like, I
Speaker 2: want to hear about something from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: I got a story for you about a dolphin king anyway,
Speaker 3: Joan of Arc. Yeah, so we've got our baby dolphin king. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and we're waiting for the prophecy to come to pass.
Speaker 2: Yep, We're waiting for the maid. Joan of Arc was
Speaker 2: born in fourteen twelve, which means that she was three
Speaker 2: years old when half of France's nobilities got stuck full
Speaker 2: of arrows in the mud. She was a commoner. There's
Speaker 2: no record of her birth. She was called Jeannette, she
Speaker 2: told inquisitors later about her name. In my town they
Speaker 2: called me Jeanette, and since I came to France, I
Speaker 2: have been called Joan. As for my surname I know
Speaker 2: of none.
Speaker 3: She's not from France.
Speaker 2: So this is the interesting thing, Right, I got really
Speaker 2: annoyed because all of her quotes are constantly like and
Speaker 2: then I went to France from where So she was
Speaker 2: born in this town called dom Remi, which is on
Speaker 2: the border between France, or rather English controlled France, like
Speaker 2: Burgundy kind of, and then the Holy Roman Empire, which
Speaker 2: is like also kind of doing a Burgundy thing. Right,
Speaker 2: all of the control is really up in the air.
Speaker 3: So is this just more indicative of the fact that
Speaker 3: like people didn't have that sort of national identity, like
Speaker 3: they didn't really think of themselves as the people of France.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even though her town kind of did. But I
Speaker 2: get the impression they saw themselves as like outliers. Like
Speaker 2: it's like, I don't know, being on an island and
Speaker 2: then going to the mainland kind of thing. Like dom
Speaker 2: Remi was French but across the river sometimes considered it
Speaker 2: the same town, but not is Burgundian. And at this
Speaker 2: point in the Civil War, one half of the town
Speaker 2: that she's from fucking hates the other half, or the
Speaker 2: town across the river or whatever, and they're like they're
Speaker 2: not armies but they're like leading raids back and forth
Speaker 2: across the.
Speaker 3: It's a Springfield Shelbyville situation.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. I do get that reference because I was
Speaker 2: born and I was gonna say born in the nineties,
Speaker 2: but that's not true at all. But I grew up
Speaker 2: in the nineties and her region, I believe, was entirely
Speaker 2: encircled by Burgundians. And so this is why I think
Speaker 2: Joan referred to its going to France, is that they're
Speaker 2: an island of France away from France kind of, but
Speaker 2: it's definitely in France.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Jeannette was one of five kids. She had no formal education.
Speaker 2: She never learned to read or write. She was smart
Speaker 2: as fuck, she was charismatic as fuck, and she had
Speaker 2: away with words, and she would not like me cussing
Speaker 2: about her. And she was obnoxiously pious. Instead of plowing
Speaker 2: the fields, she would head over the next town over
Speaker 2: to go to the bigger church because they had a
Speaker 2: nicer cathedral. Boys in the village regularly made fun of
Speaker 2: her for her piety. Rude. I know. Meanwhile, the war
Speaker 2: is going really really badly for the Daufall.
Speaker 3: Oh right, they're still doing the war.
Speaker 2: They are still doing the war. That's like, yeah, one
Speaker 2: of his major allies has now swapped sides and he
Speaker 2: lost fifteen thousand soldiers in one battle.
Speaker 3: You can't really do that very many times.
Speaker 2: No, he thinks he's done at that point. A run
Speaker 2: out of guys, Yeah, he kind of does run out
Speaker 2: of guys at that point. He's like a shell of
Speaker 2: a you know, he's a young king, right, and the
Speaker 2: first thing he does is get his entire army wiped
Speaker 2: the fuck out in one go.
Speaker 3: That's so hard to replace. That's like a lot of
Speaker 3: horses and nice outfits and stuff.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, right, And actually when basically most
Speaker 2: of the replenishing of the armies that's going to happen
Speaker 2: mostly has to do with people. Then, like swapping sides
Speaker 2: back to his side. That's going to happen every now
Speaker 2: and then, mostly because of Yolanda. So, Yolanda had been
Speaker 2: away doing political shit that I whatever, and then she
Speaker 2: came back and she started turning things not around, but
Speaker 2: like stemming the tide, ending the string of failures. She
Speaker 2: raised an army to defend her own castle and did
Speaker 2: so defended her castle that they were trying to claim.
Speaker 2: And then she did diplomacy to bring important people back
Speaker 2: to the side of France, but still not looking good.
Speaker 2: The Deaufant is doubting his own cause maybe God isn't
Speaker 2: on his side after all. He's losing badly and quickly.
Speaker 2: Even when he gather up a bunch of troops, he
Speaker 2: wouldn't go on the offensive with them because he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I should stay where it's safe. I
Speaker 2: give up kind of.
Speaker 3: He's got the yips, the what the yips?
Speaker 2: What's the yips?
Speaker 3: It's like a sports psychology term, right where you get
Speaker 3: so in your own head that you can't do the
Speaker 3: thing that you're good at. Yes, he doesn't want to
Speaker 3: take a risk. He's good at nothing, but yes, well yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, he's going to be named Dolphin, which
Speaker 3: is also a very sports kind of thing to be. So,
Speaker 3: Yolanda of Aragorn, of Aragon, that's the second time.
Speaker 2: Oh there's gonna be more, I'm sure, Yolanda of Gondor, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: She's like, how the fuck am I going to save
Speaker 2: the free people of Middle Earth from the forces of Mortar. No,
Speaker 2: they're all it's it's a horizontal battle that's entirely lateral.
Speaker 2: Both sides are shitty or whatever, but we're you know,
Speaker 2: you pick a side and then this story is shown whatever.
Speaker 3: Well, only one side is ordained by God.
Speaker 2: I heard, Oh that's true. Yeah, whichever side kills the
Speaker 2: other one the most effectively. That's what Jesus always talked about,
Speaker 2: Kill thy enemy. So Yolanda Aragorn is like, how the
Speaker 2: fuck do I say, France? I want to turn shit around.
Speaker 2: I need to give people, especially the Daufont hope. And
Speaker 2: there was this famous woman seer, Marie of Avignon, who
Speaker 2: was said to be able to predict the future. She
Speaker 2: had written this book of predictions and people trusted her.
Speaker 2: So a rumor started up that there was a new
Speaker 2: prophecy from Marie, and this started spreading. This rumor coincidentally
Speaker 2: started spreading from the areas where Yolanda was countess.
Speaker 3: Is it a coincidence?
Speaker 2: Like, we genuinely don't know if Yolanda spread this prophecy.
Speaker 2: But I read this really amazing book called The Maid
Speaker 2: and the Queen by Nancy Gladstone. It presents this kind
Speaker 2: of hypothesis that I find very convincing that sort of
Speaker 2: fits a lot of the holes in the Joan of
Speaker 2: Arc story by Yolanda in it. You know, Nancy has
Speaker 2: this great quote historians, this great quote, but like, why
Speaker 2: didn't anyone notice that Yolanda was doing it? Because she
Speaker 2: is a woman. The best camouflage in history is to
Speaker 2: not have a dick, like, you.
Speaker 3: Know, nobody's looking for you, to be crafty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or like even connecting the dots, you know, you're
Speaker 2: like even because people know that Yolanda was like a
Speaker 2: powerful woman and stuff, right, but she was kind of
Speaker 2: lost to history because she wasn't you have to be
Speaker 2: like Joan of Arc level to be remembered as a
Speaker 2: woman at this time, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess she's the only one we remember.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so this prophecy spreads, and probably Yolanda started
Speaker 2: this prophecy, but we don't know about a virgin woman
Speaker 2: who would come from the borderlands to pick up arms
Speaker 2: and free France from its enemies. And to quote this
Speaker 2: historian Nancy Goldstone, in nearly every hamlet, town or village
Speaker 2: in fifteenth century France there lived someone who claimed to
Speaker 2: have visions, or who could interpret dream or who was
Speaker 2: otherwise believed to have been somehow touched by God. These
Speaker 2: were the likely targets of the prophecy, and it acted
Speaker 2: upon them like a recruitment slogan, so that.
Speaker 3: They've just got like seers showing up being like, oh,
Speaker 3: I heard about your I heard about your prophecy. I'm
Speaker 3: here because it's it's me.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that's never in any of
Speaker 2: the stories I've read about Joan of Arc except that
Speaker 2: one book, and even then it was like only a sentence.
Speaker 2: Twenty people showed up.
Speaker 3: I would like to know their stories, I know.
Speaker 2: And Jeannette without surname known to us now as Joan
Speaker 2: of Arc, she had been having visions and we'll talk
Speaker 2: about those visions and how she became a badass night
Speaker 2: and killed a whole bunch of motherfuckers on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, you're gonna make people wait two days
Speaker 3: to find out.
Speaker 2: I know, even you, well now you have to wait
Speaker 2: about five minutes. But yep, everyone's got to wait.
Speaker 4: God, ask for a spoiler.
Speaker 2: Okay, what spoiler you want? Was she like I am
Speaker 2: no man, no, no, but like she has more of
Speaker 2: that energy than yeah, like I really people would really
Speaker 2: kind of sold me on the like she was a
Speaker 2: mascot thing, yeah, you know, or like sort of inconsequential
Speaker 2: or got lucky once. She's fucking badass, and like France
Speaker 2: exists because of this lady. I mean, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: there'd be the world map would look different, not necessarily better,
Speaker 2: not necessarily worse. Whatever. France is another fucking colonial power.
Speaker 2: But who fucking knows the visions themselves? You can know
Speaker 2: by waiting till Wednesday. But first people can hear about
Speaker 2: Weird Little Guys.
Speaker 3: Yes, I am a podcaster now, much like Joan of
Speaker 3: arc I have fulfilled the prophecy so true, so true.
Speaker 2: Gross.
Speaker 3: Sorry, God, God's gonna smite me. He's gonna get me. No,
Speaker 3: I have a new show on Cool Zoe Media. It's
Speaker 3: called Weird Little Guys, and it's it's about guys who
Speaker 3: did not do cool stuff at all, guys who did
Speaker 3: stuff that sucked. It's a show about.
Speaker 2: Monsters, fucking Burgundians.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not going that far in the past.
Speaker 2: It's okay because although.
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe by the thirty orth or fortieth episode,
Speaker 3: we'll be talking about fourteenth century fascists. Hell yeah, they
Speaker 3: hadn't invented it yet, but we'll find one.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's how I like half my show is like,
Speaker 2: especially in the near future, will be like, look, anarchism
Speaker 2: didn't exist yet, but let me tell you about some
Speaker 2: fourteenth century heretics were based Joan of arc.
Speaker 3: Isn't but like, but they have the vibe. They had
Speaker 3: the vibe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we'll be talking about some people with some
Speaker 2: good vibes. Yeah. I suspect that you will reach the
Speaker 2: point where you go past your original expectations of scope.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the scope creeps, I suppose, right, But for now, Yes,
Speaker 3: you should go and subscribe to Weird Little Guys on
Speaker 3: whatever podcast app makes you feel good.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, I'm really excited about it, like genuinely. Also,
Speaker 2: if people want to hear they're like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I have to make sure to hear Molly on other
Speaker 2: shows first. Then there's an awful lot of it could
Speaker 2: happen here that you can listen to with Molly on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I still host on it can happen here occasionally,
Speaker 3: So yeah, you can acclimate yourself to my mallifluous voice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a word, I totally know. Why do I
Speaker 2: not know that word? You think that this is the
Speaker 2: kind of thing I would know I know about? Like
Speaker 2: these and thousand. Shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, oh, I don't know, I could. I
Speaker 3: couldn't actually give you the actual word. Yeah no, but
Speaker 3: it's like, you know, it's just sort of melodic and soothing.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, yeah, So if you got anything you want
Speaker 2: to plug, no, we did it that well. I want
Speaker 2: to say, if you like women with swords and spears,
Speaker 2: I have a book coming out hell yeah, by a
Speaker 2: woman with more axes and spears. She's kind of into
Speaker 2: spears specifically, and it's called The Sapling Cage and it
Speaker 2: is a fantasy book about a transwitch who fights with
Speaker 2: a spear sometimes. And you can pre order it now
Speaker 2: and get it in September. And if you preorder it
Speaker 2: now from Firestorm co Op, which is a queer owned
Speaker 2: bookstore in Nashville, North Carolina, but they sell it online,
Speaker 2: you will get a signed copy because last week I
Speaker 2: signed thousands of stickers book plates. Fancy order for stickers,
Speaker 2: and you could have one of them yourself, and we'll
Speaker 2: see you on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 3: You get your podcasts.