Every year, the city of Orléans celebrates with pomp and circumstance the liberation of the city from the English yoke during the Hundred Years’ War, thanks to the victorious intervention of Saint Joan of Arc at the head of the French armies. For the occasion, a young girl from the town lends her features to the valiant fighter and is flanked by two young boys as her pages. This year, the town rejected one of the two selected candidates on the grounds that he had frequented the Action Française movement and espoused values “contrary to the Republic”. A kind of paradox: after all, didn’t Jeanne herself fight for her God and her king?
