For me, Joan is a soldier first, with no pretensions to beatification or canonization, and I think it is important to note that she wasn’t made a saint until nearly five hundred years after her death. I envisioned a Joan inspired by God only insofar that she was gifted with the genius of being a great warrior, a natural leader, and a prophet. A prophet not of a vague and mist-covered future populated with angels, but a prophet of the future of battle, knowing how war would one day be fought, how victory could be concretely attained. In 1453, France would win the Hundred Years’ War, twenty-two years after Joan’s death in 1431, largely through its usage of artillery. This Joan’s version of prayer is talking and, as seen in this book, often bargaining with her God. She is no mild or humble genius. She has a mouth on her. She is hot-tempered. Proud bordering on arrogant. Flawed but charismatic. Full of rage and capable of inflicting great destruction and death but also loving, introspective, hopeful for better days ahead. In other words, still very much human.

It isn’t that I don’t believe in the power of faith. I do, and Joan comes to see the power of faith, though not necessarily faith in the Almighty—rather, the faith others have placed in her. But faith is, for the very reasons that make it unbreakable, also intangible. I had to take many liberties with Joan’s history and with the history of the time to make Joan’s journey relatable. This story is a quest. It is a quest of a young woman living in wartime who goes off on an adventure. It is a quest for vengeance and redemption. It is also a story about how a hero is shaped and made, how she is tried and tested, until the final product is something that can’t be destroyed by any human hand, until not even physical defeat in battle can break her. In the end, this Joan, like the historical Joan, embodies something far greater than herself, and this something has fascinated, entranced, and enthralled us for centuries. There is no one who hears her story who does not also feel a tingle of electricity in the air, a sense of wonder. Centuries later, she continues to stand alone, and though she has been made into a saint, I would argue that she stands quite apart from even that exalted company in many ways. She is, in my mind, utterly unique.