Scott Alexander (author/host)

The very first siege where artillery is recorded as being used in Western Europe is Orleans.

By 50 years after that, maybe they have an answer, but not within the year.

I'm not saying they're dumb, but it does sometimes take more than a year to solve problems.

Basilica.

That's Fletcher Pratt, who says it was the first siege, and he is not a reliable source.

Enter Charolais, who suspects a conspiracy.

Charolais.

Alternatively, she could just have gotten trained by an expert artillerist.

Two heads turn.

Charolais, unruffled, continues, I heard you were talking about Joan of Arc.

So, Arendelle, I take it you support the theory that she was mentally ill?

Arendelle, specifically manic, but yes.

Charolais, Mania is not generally known to result in accurate predictions of the future or extraordinary horse-riding, lance-using skills.

Arendelle, you'd rather discard all the testimony of her village?

Charolais,

Yes, I think so.

Neither you nor I have read the untranslated sections of the Trial of Rehabilitation, and we aren't trained in forensic linguistics.

There are two points where, if you're wrong, your theory fails.

Your intuition that you can do a good enough job at amateur forensic linguistics to tell that the characters in the Trial of Rehabilitation have different voices, and your belief that Régine de Pornou is a reliable source.

If we discard one leading French historian of the period as reliable...