Special Guest Blogger: Jean de Dunois

When your nickname is the Bastard of Orléans you know that you truly are a bastard and the person i was a bastard to the most was Joan of Arc and we were on the same side.
How the hell a 17-year-old farm girl with no military experience whatsoever and who believed her orders came from the archangel Michael was able to be taken seriously by any military is bad enough, even a French one.
At first i was more than happy keeping Joan out of battle and, for the most part, ignoring her, which was exactly what i did saying that i was not being condescending but i was far too busy thinking about far more important things which as a girl, she wouldn’t understand so i left her out of my war counsels but she did complain to me about that i told her that i had more important things on my mind than what a schizophrenic teenager thought and that losing wars to the English was something better left to the men of the French military.
One worry i had was the strong Northerly wind that was preventing our ships from dropping off our food supplies so i gave a flippant, have a word with your man upstairs to sort the wind out if you want to help and i walked off trading high fives and bum slaps with my Generals.
All of a sudden, before i had got back to my tent, the wind just suddenly dropped and changed direction so it actually helped the ships come ashore and there was Joan standing with a 'what ya think of that then bastard' look on her face.
I had no choice but to believe that Joan had stopped the wind with the power of her prayers or something so thinking she must have the big guy on her side, i made her head of the army and together we led the French defenses at the siege of Orléans, and that girl with the divine inspirations sure could fight, sending the British skittering buttocks first out of Orléans, then out of Les Augustins, Patay and Troyes and our confidence grew as we believed that through Joan, God was supporting the French against the stupid English  and then she got captured, put on trial and turned into a crispy shade of burnt black and us French went back to getting out arses whupped by the English and losing the hundred year war.
I returned to my comfortable job in the Royal household but for one brief moment i thought not being a sexist bastard was going to work but it never so i was just went back to being a plain old bastard and i was happy with that.