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We are the cavalry

Katie Phang May 30 ∙ Preview

Today, May 30th, in 1431 and at just 19 years of age, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake at the Place du Vieux-Marche in Rouen, France. Accused of being a heretic and convicted for refusing to submit to the authority of the church, Joan was condemned to die. Born a peasant girl, she is now celebrated for being a great heroine of France and was recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 1920.

I was so inspired by the story of Joan of Arc and by the stunning statue I saw in her honor when I was last in Paris, I wrote the Substack piece, “Are YOU the next Joan of Arc?” earlier this year. My message is clear: leadership doesn’t require glamour or privileged birth. The fabric of our democracy is varied and unique simply because we, the people, are varied and unique.

As these times remain dark, I am reupping my prior Substack piece now, in the hopes that you can be just as inspired by Joan of Arc’s fierce and dogged determination:

History loves resistance heroes who “look” the part: usually born into privilege, trained by institutions, and wrapped in a narrative that makes their leadership feel…inevitable.

Joan of Arc was none of those things. She was a teenage peasant girl from a farming village. No noble lineage and no formal education. No military experience. No political connections.

Joan was born around 1412 in the village of Domrémy, in northeastern France. Her family were farmers—neither destitute nor powerful, just ordinary rural people trying to survive in a country ravaged by war. Like most peasant girls of her time, Joan had no exposure to education, formal or otherwise. She was illiterate and had little knowledge of the wider world, let alone politics.

And yet, in one of the most desperate moments in French history, Joan of Arc changed the trajectory of a war that had been grinding France into dust for nearly a century. That fact alone should make us rethink what leadership actually looks like...

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