Joan of Arc

Joan was born around 1412 in Domrémy, a small farming village in northeastern France, right on the border of territory loyal to the French crown and land held by Burgundian forces allied with England. Her father, Jacques, farmed and held a modest position in the village; her mother, Isabelle, raised Joan and her siblings and taught her the basics of the faith — prayer, the creed, the sacraments — since Joan never learned to read or write.

Most of her childhood was spent the way any peasant girl's was: minding sheep, spinning wool, helping with the housework and the harvest. She was known in the village for being unusually devout for her age, slipping into the church to pray far more often than was expected of her. France at the time was deep into the Hundred Years' War, and Domrémy itself had been raided more than once. War wasn't a distant idea to her — it was smoke on the horizon and neighbours fleeing their homes. Nobody in that village, least of all Joan, had any reason to think she'd be remembered five hundred years later.