More on the Maid and the Monster

On May 30, 1431, Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake. This is surely the most dreadful of all deaths and even the worst of us do not deserve such a fate. Joan was far from that, one of the most enigmatic and intriguing figures of the MA, and so we ought to spare a sympathetic thought for her today, France’s patron saint and possibly one of the greatest challenges for any historical novelist.
Also on May 30th, 1536, Henry VIII took his third wife, Jane Seymour, after mourning his second wife, Anne Boleyn, for all of ten days. In my more cynical moments, I think that Jane was the luckiest of Henry’s wives, dying before the bloom was off the rose, so to speak, and before she could fall from this fickle monarch’s favor.