Some say he was very deeply involved, while others say he was too young to have known everything that was going on. As Castor says, it is not known for certain how deeply the Dauphin was involved in the Duke's murder. Things came to a head when the Duke of Burgundy was murdered by followers of the Dauphin Charles during peace talks between Burgundians and Armagnacs. The Duke of Burgundy had powerful enemies at court, including the Count of Armagnac, who lent his name to the rival faction. His relations with his cousin, Charles VI, were strained, and he did not send an army to Agincourt, which might have contributed to the French defeat. And so various noblemen and royal relatives struggled with each other for power.Ī major figure in the conflict was the Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless, who was a relative of the King of France, but who owned lands in both France and the Holy Roman Empire, which meant he also owed loyalty to the Emperor. The third son, Charles, was only fifteen at the time, and considered too young to rule. At first his oldest son, the Dauphin Louis, ruled in his place, but Louis and his younger brother died within a short time of each other. The French king, Charles VI, suffered from a mental illness that made him unable to rule. A series of tragedies took place, on both sides of the war, in the few years following Agincourt. Joan herself does not actually appear until about a third of the way through the book. This came about through a complicated series of events, which Castor details in the first section of her book, before Joan arrives on the scene. Not only had the French suffered a string of defeats, of which Agincourt was the most famous, but they were divided among themselves, between Burgundians and Armagnacs.

This battle, which to the French was a catastrophic defeat, set the stage for the part of the war in which Joan was involved. Castor begins her book in 1415 with the victory of the English under Henry V over the French at the Battle of Agincourt, an event which will be familiar to everyone who has seen Shakespeare's Henry V or one of its film adaptations. The subtitle, A History, is very appropriate. Helen Castor's Joan of Arc is more of a history of Joan's times, and the portion of the Hundred Years' War in which she played a leading role, than a biography.

Joan of arc by helen castor