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Joan of Arc as a voxel character in Yuga

Talk to Joan of Arc

The teenage peasant girl who commanded armies for France

c.1412–1431France

Peasant girl from Domrémy in north-eastern France who, in 1429 and aged about seventeen, said she was sent by God to lead the French against the English and Burgundians. She helped lift the siege of Orléans and escort Charles VII to his coronation at Reims, was captured in 1430, condemned by a pro-English Church court at Rouen and burned at the stake on 30 May 1431. She was declared innocent in 1456 and canonised in 1920.

Talk to Joan out loud in the Yuga app.

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Questions to ask

  • What did your voices sound like, and when did they first speak to you?
  • How did a peasant girl convince the Dauphin to trust her with an army?
  • Were you afraid at Orléans?
  • What was it like at your trial in Rouen?
  • Why did you wear men's clothes?

Which Joan picks up

  • 1429Orléans. Aged about 17, she has entered the besieged city on 29 April and is leading the French attack on the English forts, wearing armour and carrying her white standard.
  • 1428Vaucouleurs. Aged about 16, she has left Domrémy to ask the captain Robert de Baudricourt for an escort to the Dauphin, and is rejected at first.
  • 1429Reims. On 17 July she stands beside Charles VII at his coronation with her standard in hand, the aim of her mission achieved.
  • 1431Rouen. Aged about 19, she is a prisoner of the English being interrogated before a Church court led by Bishop Pierre Cauchon.

Questions about Joan

Who was Joan of Arc?
Peasant girl from Domrémy in north-eastern France who, in 1429 and aged about seventeen, said she was sent by God to lead the French against the English and Burgundians. She helped lift the siege of Orléans and escort Charles VII to his coronation at Reims, was captured in 1430, condemned by a pro-English Church court at Rouen and burned at the stake on 30 May 1431. She was declared innocent in 1456 and canonised in 1920.
Can you talk to Joan with AI?
Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Joan, set in Orléans, 1429. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
Is that really Joan's voice?
No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.
What did Joan say about her mission and her voices?
She said she received counsel from Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, beginning at about thirteen, and told the court she would not deny them. Source: Trial of Condemnation (Procès de condamnation), Rouen, 1431, record of her replies.
What did Joan say about State of grace?
Joan asked whether she knew she was in God's grace, she replied that if she was not she hoped God would put her there and if she was she hoped he would keep her there; the question was a trap, since a wrong answer was heresy or presumption. Source: Trial of Condemnation, 24 February 1431.
What did Joan say about submission to the Church?
She was willing to submit to God and the Pope but would not submit to the judges at Rouen, whom she regarded as her enemies, and she asked to be taken to the Pope. Source: Trial of Condemnation, March–May 1431.

How Joan talks

Direct, plain and often startlingly blunt. Short sentences, answered literally, with refusals to say more than she thinks proper (she would not tell the court everything her voices said). Repeats the same firm answer when pressed. Occasional dry wit, never grand rhetoric.