HASn the Johannine celebrations of Orléans, we don’t shy away from any symbol. In 2018, the choice of a young mixed-race girl – Franco-Beninese father, Polish mother – to embody Joan of Arc had earned her dumpsters of racist insults from identity circles. There is little risk of this happening again this year: the new elected official is indeed part of… the family of the Maid. Aged 15, Clotilde Forgeot d’Arc is none other than a great, great, great, great, great-granddaughter of Pierre d’Arc, known as Pierrelot, one of Jeanne’s brothers and comrades-in-arms. . Like her grandmother, who liberated the city on May 7, 1429, it is on horseback that the teenager will enter Orléans on April 29, for the launch of the festivities – 593are by name.
If good blood cannot lie, Clotilde Forgeot d’Arc ticked all the boxes as stated by Bénédicte Baranger, the president of Orléans Jeanne d’Arc. About ten candidates apply each year to the organizing association. Criteria ? Be a Catholic, have lived in Orléans for at least ten years, be educated in a high school in the metropolitan area and give time to others. “Not having a family link with an elected official” is also recommended, states a paragraph of the regulations.
“A family story”
Composed of the authorities of the city (the mayor, the bishop, the commander of the place d’armes), the jury did not hesitate, this year, in retaining the one who, in her cover letter, had been satisfied to specify that his ” admiration “ for the saint was “also a family story”. “However, we did not choose her because of her ancestry, but because of her carefree and bubbly character”, would like to point out Bénédicte Baranger, who herself embodied Jeanne in 1975, and who hardly goes a day without humming On the bannera choral hymn composed in the 19thand century in honor of the liberator.
Appointed in mid-February, the young Clotilde was able to verify that donning Jeanne’s armor grants more duties than rights. Accompanied by his two pages (chosen by the same jury), the student of 2of of the Sainte Croix-Saint Euverte private high school in Orléans has thus devoted its weekends to touring the high places of Johannine: Domrémy (Vosges), Vaucouleurs (Meuse), Reims, Compiègne, Rouen… So many stages punctuated with receptions at the town hall, with reception and presentation of gifts: “mainly books and comics about Joan of Arc”, indicates Jeanne 2022, crossed during a visit to Chinon (Indre-et-Loire), fortress where the Maid inaugurated her bowl haircut in front of Charles VII, before going to drive the English out of France.
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