The maid and the queen

An exceptionally dramatic life of Joan of Arc and her previously unchronicled mentor, Yolande of Aragon. Joan's fleeting moment at the centre of Anglo-French politics retains its historical and cultural currency precisely because her story is never less than compelling; and Yolande of Aragon is a significant and fascinating example of those medieval women who brought extraordinary intellectual capacity and hard-won political expertise to bear on a structure of power that assumed its leaders would be male.