HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right boys. Can we record doing this?
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh man.
BEN KISSEL
Oh!
MARCUS PARKS
Oh!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow!
MARCUS PARKS
Wow!
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Big stuff.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So today's episode is a classic example of having to go through Marcus' mind.
BEN KISSEL
Great. I'm excited.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In order to get to what the rest of us like.
BEN KISSEL
I got my raincoat on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, please do.
BEN KISSEL
I got my nice shoes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're wearing your shoes?
BEN KISSEL
They're nice shoes for Marcus' mind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't wear my J's in Marcus' mind.
BEN KISSEL
No, no, they're two cut up avocados.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're talking about just feet coverings that you're calling shoes.
BEN KISSEL
For Marcus' brain.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
I would recommend sturdy shoes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would as well.
MARCUS PARKS
It's quite rocky. Craggy, it's craggy in there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Craggy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, craggy. I think it would be wet to be honest.
MARCUS PARKS
Wet and craggy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's like the coast of Iceland.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Either way, I hope you're fucking mind cloaca is ready for a bunch of 100 Year War data.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because we've got to get through it to get to the good stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not getting through it, it's getting to talk about it. It's having the privilege-
BEN KISSEL
How much are we gonna talk shovels? Are we talking about shovels?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No shovels except for shovels that are used inside of little girls.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a long story.
BEN KISSEL
All right. Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left everyone. Ben hanging out with Henry and Marcus. Today's episode, I think it's fantastic because we're getting back to our French roots.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, we've always said we began French.
BEN KISSEL
I love the French. Currently going through a bit of upheaval.
MARCUS PARKS
They're always going through a bit of an upheaval. That is France's national identity.
BEN KISSEL
Let's get into some upheaval of the past. Gilles de Rais! That's who we're talking about today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You did a good job.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The French version of George? I'm not sure.
BEN KISSEL
Gilles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Marcus also did good in the entire outline where he wrote out phonetically the French.
BEN KISSEL
I see that.
MARCUS PARKS
Every single French name, every single French location, it has all been written phonetically so as to not gain the ire of the people who care how I speak French.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting. And of course he did spell out the words Gerard Depardieu, G-R-O-P-E-R for groper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's really good. That is really, really good.
BEN KISSEL
He's a bit of a groper!
MARCUS PARKS
And a bit of a tinkler.
BEN KISSEL
I don't wanna know what that means.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He pissed on an airplane, we all know.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right?
MARCUS PARKS
He pissed himself on an airplane after drinking too much red wine.
BEN KISSEL
At least he wasn't sober.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But for all of you clamor and for blood, it's coming.
MARCUS PARKS
It's coming.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles de Rais was a 15th century French medieval nobleman who repeatedly tortured, raped, and murdered hundreds of children in some of the most brutal ways imaginable in the castles on his many estates.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's the only way to do it. As far as I'm concerned is that the only way it's kind of appropriate is if you have many, many castles and many, many estates.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh I thought you were talking about the way in which he murdered. It's like you really don't want to do it tenderly. You want to make sure you do it brutally.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Brutally.
BEN KISSEL
No, he was talking about the real estate angle in all this. And that's what we really want to get into, these prices.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Gilles' is a story reminiscent of the Game of Thrones books, one of decadence, palace intrigue, backstabbing, wide scale slaughter-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Plagues, heroes, martyrs, murders, and black magic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude!
BEN KISSEL
I thought you were going to say and boobs.
MARCUS PARKS
There are actually boobs here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Boobs come up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Adult boobs. Okay, teenage boobs.
BEN KISSEL
Well with inflation they're adult boobs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
French roots. That's what this entire episode is about is our French roots.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now Gilles de Rais has been said by some to be the basis of the Bluebeard fairytale which first appeared in written form in Charles Perot's 1697 story collection called 'Tales of Mother Goose'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a heavy story for Mother Goose.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely a heavy story for Mother Goose. And you try to tell your wife that you weren't eating out a smurf, you come home with a blue beard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's funny. Again, funny stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
That's funny stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or you're addicted to silver nitrate.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, colloidal silver. This of course is where we also get the modern versions of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood. Mother Goose sanitized these versions for children so as to avoid scenes such as the one in the original tale where Little Red Riding Hood does a striptease for the wolf as a last resort.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that's my play.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If I'm trapped in a room with a wild wolf, like a snarling dog, it's always important to get good and naked. So that that wolf looks at you, I think it understands for a second, that's an animal too.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you get hard at it, they back down.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely correct, Henry. And don't forget the new Pixar movie Little Red Riding Hood about the talking clitoris that could.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
I'm on fire today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Save some of this stuff. Save it.
BEN KISSEL
I am so hungover from my own stupidity.
MARCUS PARKS
In that version of the story, it doesn't work. The striptease doesn't work and the wolf eats everything except for her arms.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
BEN KISSEL
Really?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well all these stories come with a moral and the moral of that one is trying to discourage women from sex work. If you try to strip your way in front of the wolf, the wolf will eventually eat you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that actually is an important lesson to learn just because the wolf will eat you. But at the same time, be naked when you're dead. I think that's important. Die naked. Go for it.
BEN KISSEL
I agree.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the Mother Goose version of Bluebeard is actually no less violent than the original version of Little Red Riding Hood. In that version, a nobleman with a hideous blue beard attempts to murder his newlywed wife for disobeying his orders to not look in one particular closet while he's away on business.
BEN KISSEL
Very John Wayne Gacy of him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
She of course looks and finds that the closet is full of the corpses of Bluebeard's previous wives who had all been killed for looking into the closet full of corpses of previous wives who had also looked into the closet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a constant vicious cycle.
BEN KISSEL
What's the moral here?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't look in rooms!
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But just as Bluebeard is about to decapitate his latest wife, her brothers appear and save her. And she thereafter remarries to a kinder man and lives happily ever after.
BEN KISSEL
Not one of the brothers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
But the interesting thing-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
These stories, honestly they can take weird turns.
MARCUS PARKS
They really can.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh very much so. And then yeah, she gets double teamed by all of her brothers. I guess quadruple teamed by her entire family. And then all of a sudden like what book is this? Mother Who's?
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. And it's like you're going to go to grandma's house today. Hi, I'm grandma. I'm also your mom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't understand.
MARCUS PARKS
On fire.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That one I'm lost on.
BEN KISSEL
Because she would be the grandmother and the mother if she was tag teamed by her own brothers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that does make sense.
BEN KISSEL
Wouldn't she also be the aunt?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I follow you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As soon as you're coming in a family member, just call her aunt.
MARCUS PARKS
But the interesting thing about Bluebeard in relation to our man Gilles de Rais is that Gilles never murdered a wife, nor did he have a blue beard. While Gilles is often referred to as Bluebeard in modern times to the point where both of our main sources for this series have Bluebeard in the title-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The stories have nothing to do with each other.
MARCUS PARKS
There's no historical basis for Gilles de Rais being related to Bluebeard. More likely Bluebeard was based on a dark ages ruler named Conomor the Cursed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's fucking sweet!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa. That is cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is where history is cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you find these guys. He's a literal guy who took the nickname 'The Cursed'. You know what I mean? Like you have to be a truly very difficult man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Conomor the Cursed roamed the forests of Brittany as a werewolf after death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(metal guitar riff)
MARCUS PARKS
And later served as a spectral ferryman for the Breton river where he he absconded with Christian souls.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa, that's cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In a game of telephone of history, what do you think people would say about us and what we are like and what do we do in an allegorical sense?
BEN KISSEL
Henry the Pork Dweller.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh, pork dweller!
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well one possible explanation for Gilles de Rais' connection to Bluebeard is that both he and Conomor the Cursed were from Breton. And over the years the name Bluebeard may have just been become a byword for any cruel French nobleman who delighted in the murder of innocents.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I also I think the one similarity is, as we'll go through all of the many accounts of what the actual quote unquote "crimes" of Gilles de Rais which we will cover all angles of it. But I think the concept that he had bodies hidden in his home.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that is probably the one direct connection.
MARCUS PARKS
Had a lot of bodies said in his home.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And there were a lot of bodies around where he was.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Wherever Gilles de Rais was, you would find a lot of bodies of dead children stuffed into pipes, burnt in gigantic piles, funeral pyres.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, this sounds like a coincidence to me.
BEN KISSEL
It does seem like he has an unusual amount of child corpses surrounding him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kind of like you don't really want to be Bill Clinton's best friend.
BEN KISSEL
No, you don't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They die.
MARCUS PARKS
Now we actually have no idea when Gilles de Rais began murdering the peasant children that he either kidnapped or bought from their parents. But during his trial, he was accused of spending the previous 14 years of doing so. He did however correct the court, saying that he'd actually only been murdering for 8 years.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See that's how you know he's a murderer, when he has to do the thing where he's like, 'Um, actually' about his own series of generation of child rape.
BEN KISSEL
He's a nerd.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, he's like (dweeb voice) if you take a look at my Reddit profile, I think you'll know I started murdering 8 years ago.
MARCUS PARKS
(dweeb voice) Look at how many times I've gotten gold for murdering children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes! Why can't I be like you?
MARCUS PARKS
But to that point, we also have no idea how many murders Gilles de Rais actually committed. At the low end, estimates put his body count at around 140.
BEN KISSEL
Dang, that's the low end?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the low end.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
The more sensational accusations have Gilles murdering almost 1000 children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean at that point though, how are you doing anything else?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, seriously.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If it's thousands of children now, we're like okay, all right buddy. That's literally overkill.
BEN KISSEL
Did he hold down a job this whole time?
MARCUS PARKS
He was a bit of a gadabout. During some of this time he did have a job as a soldier, which we'll get into, but he was a nobleman. Their entire lives were based around decadence and showing how decadent they really could be. He was also a theatrical producer for a little while, we'll get into that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And a wizard. Yeah, he had a lot of different hobbies.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, a wizard?
MARCUS PARKS
He did. Yeah, it's vanity hobbies. But you could describe his serial killing as a vanity hobby?
BEN KISSEL
I wonder how many people Russell Brand has killed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just wait a year until that becomes a marketable thing that he can say on his podcast.
MARCUS PARKS
Well what we know from testimony during Gilles' trial however is that the sheer number of victims and the freedom he exercised in their killing, it allowed for an escalation of cruelty and gruesome experimentation not seen outside of Dennis Rader's wildest fantasies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because again, Dennis Rader didn't have the institutional family money it would take to make these giant fantasies come true.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's really what it comes down to, it's about investing your money correctly.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why we here at Robin Hood Investments really think that if you want to build up your opportunities for child murder by thinking about tomorrow, today.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Integrated marketing. Integrated marketing complete. Good job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't even cover us, they dropped us years ago.
BEN KISSEL
Oh did they?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they did.
BEN KISSEL
Robin Hood is a scam anyway.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, fuck those pieces of fucking shit.
BEN KISSEL
Also Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. But Robin Hood, that means they're gonna take all my money and give it to someone else. Mean.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
On fire today.
BEN KISSEL
On fire.
MARCUS PARKS
On fire. But I mean to the point of Dennis Rader, when Dennis Rader was a child and when he was an adult, he would draw these elaborate like peepee dungeons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
He would draw these huge silos where trains would come and run over women but slowly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, they did the same thing, the giant descriptions of massive torture castles and underground bunkers filled with rape rooms.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Gilles de Rais did that. He made all of that reality. But of course there's also debate as to how much of that is true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Did any of that really happen? I mean of course all of this is well documented, his trial was well documented, where they found the bodies was well documented. And that's the thing is that this story, this is not some dark ages tale, this is not rumor or legend. Our story occurred during the Hundred Years' War. It heavily involves none other than Joan of Arc.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, she shows up. And I gotta say terrible haircut, great attitude.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely legendary.
MARCUS PARKS
But if all the tales of de Rais' savagery were invented solely for the trial, then it would not be a stretch to say that 15th century France was home to some of the most imaginative gore hounds this side of Herschell Gordon Lewis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Seriously.
BEN KISSEL
It's almost like there was 100 Year War that they lived through.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They saw a lot of blood.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They saw a lot of violence personally. Just the people of France saw a lot of shit and that would continue for a very long time, it feels like. Because again, it was like plague, Hundred Years' War, all of this stuff is all happening all at the same time. So it was a very violent time period. And Gilles de Rais, that's why we don't know whether or not people are spinning fantasies out to do a political hit, which we'll kind of discover, we'll talk about the basis of eventually. Or is it just because guys like Gilles de Rais came about and kind of utilized the world of mass violence and kind of lived amongst it in a way that they were ready for and loved and embraced?
BEN KISSEL
Seems like Mr. Gilles de Rais needs to have a one on one interview with Oprah and really clear the air.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that would be incredible, yeah. Gilles de Rais with a 15 year old Joan of Arc just seeing visions next to Oprah, they're 15 ft apart, COVID. And it's so nice that they're in the middle of her giant bunker and they got drones in and out. But again, they don't really want attention but they have a lot of cameras there at the same time.
MARCUS PARKS
But before we get into the whole story, let's acknowledge our sources. For this three, maybe four part historical extravaganza-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, we cover a lot of ground in this show.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. We have 'Gilles de Rais: A Biography of Bluebeard' by Jean Benedetti.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Benedetti.
MARCUS PARKS
Benedetti. And 'Bluebeard' by Leonard Wolf. And don't worry, all ye 'well actuallys' out there, we will get to the Gilles de Rais is innocent rebuttal at the end of the series.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes we will.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as opposed to the dark ages of Conomor the Cursed-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes! Oh no, I won the lottery but I've lost the ticket! Damn this nickname!
BEN KISSEL
No!
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles de Rais was a middle ages nobleman who lived through and fought in the third phase of the Hundred Years' War against England and the hated Burgundians of France.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hate you, Burgundians!
BEN KISSEL
Oh absolutely. The way that they are just constantly throwing rotten fruit at you. I hate a Burgundian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because you know what's bad about stinky old fruit? Ain't wine yet. Bring it to me when it's wine, please.
BEN KISSEL
But of course here at Burgundian's, kids under 8 eat free. So don't worry about it. Also if you have the gout, half off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Half off.
MARCUS PARKS
Half off.
BEN KISSEL
Here at Burgundian's.
MARCUS PARKS
Well by the time Gilles de Rais was born, the Hundred Years' War had already been ebbing and flowing for 67 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was only 67% done and he only got 33% left.
MARCUS PARKS
A little less than 67% actually because it actually lasted for 116 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What the living fuck?
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Yeah, that's a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why are we not doing a whole episode about that?
BEN KISSEL
116 year war doesn't really sound good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's dumb.
BEN KISSEL
That's dumb. 100 years, that's perfect.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it was three phases. It had kind of been kept alive through squabbles between France and England and sometimes between France and France.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But France wasn't France, France was half England.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. We'll get into that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, I don't understand.
BEN KISSEL
I'm excited.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is one of these wars that like... That's why I was like with Marcus as we were doing the production call, I was like this week it's all about you explaining to me and Kissel what has happened.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I think I have done a passable job.
BEN KISSEL
All right, let's get into it.
MARCUS PARKS
But as it goes during warfare both medieval and modern, and as it went with the victims of Gilles de Rais, those who bore the brunt of the violence and horror in the Hundred Years' War were the people caught inbetween.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man. It's always the turkey in the sandwich that gets the teeth.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. That's a fantastic saying, I like it.
MARCUS PARKS
It really is. Really good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Just made it up.
BEN KISSEL
I hope you did because if you stole that from someone-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I stole it from a very stupid man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the armies of both sides of the Hundred Years' War regularly turned the French countryside into a blood soaked plague ridden horror show of desolation and death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Filled with rotting cattle and deserted villages populated only by the skeletons of the people who once lived there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Only skeletons live here, man! It's like Williamsburg, New York.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it does sound like that. All right, really fun. Did they ever think about picking up the skeletons and maybe moving them?
MARCUS PARKS
Why?
BEN KISSEL
Because you want to build a house or something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No because all that's gonna happen is is next day, yeah, the French just push through, the next day the British are just gonna push through. You're just gonna have to fucking pick up skeletons.
MARCUS PARKS
More skeletons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's why I don't make the bed.
BEN KISSEL
I see. This is like when you know you're gonna start a bender on Friday, so you're like ah fuck it, I won't clean my house til Sunday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because what's the point? I'm just gonna tear this in a fucking self hatred filled rage just again and again and again.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why clean?
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
MARCUS PARKS
And if I'm gonna go on a bender on Friday, why do I really need to put in effort on Thursday? And then if Thursday really isn't gonna be a big deal, then Wednesday might as well be out the window either.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, what the fuck am I doing Wednesday? Well Wednesday if I don't give a shit, Tuesday... You don't even get me out of bed for less than $10,000!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. You guys are making a really valid points here.
MARCUS PARKS
But the armies were only the half of it. Peasants also had to contend with the mercenaries, the land pirates, the free knights, all of whom plundered villages for food, supplies, and kidnappings.
BEN KISSEL
Land pirates just sound like they're in ship formation but they're too poor to have a ship.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Keep going, get those oars going, boys! They're just like stuck in grass.
BEN KISSEL
Captain, should we find water, please?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Arr, to the plank with you! And then just jumps 6 ft to the ground.
MARCUS PARKS
Well kidnappings and pillaging, that was how most of these men including the official French soldiers, that's how they derived their pay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
In fact it was considered respectable for a professional soldier to hold people for ransom to fill their pockets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a reminder to the audience, so we're in this period of time where we're a little bit more self conscious than we would have been in the past and have this knowledge. So we're always like the end of the world is happening right now, when it's actually the world used to be like way more dangerous.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this concept of like weaponizing looting, because I use that, CIV. CIV VI.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's extremely important when you're doing a domination run, right? Because you gotta get those guys in there, you get cavalry in there going really fast, they rip up all the natural resources. So you cripple them supply-wise.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Then you gape them from the back, you come from back. They don't even fucking expect, all of a sudden the siege towers run the fucking unoccupied lands around them. And they had no fucking clue that you were coming until it was too late.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
If you went back in time and just told Gilles de Rais that story but didn't say that you learned all that through a video game, you could have become a general.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would have been a general.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's how I view this all this. Yes. Every single time I read about medieval war strategy, like yes, very good, I did use that in the campaign of 2019.
BEN KISSEL
When I went to the Torture Museum when we were in Italy, you know the one that you stand up and they shut the door and it's got a bunch of spikes in it? I was too tall.
MARCUS PARKS
For the iron maiden.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. So I they wouldn't have done that to me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They would have beat you to death. I think they would have stabbed you with a bunch of swords. I went to one Italian torture museum that was an awful, I was just in this room and then this slat opened up and it was just this guy eating delicious spaghetti on the other side.
BEN KISSEL
And you couldn't get to it, sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I kept slamming my face and rubbing up against it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. You went to an Italian jerkoff. An Italian jerkoff booth where you just watch someone eat. Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the reason why life was so chaotic, this could all be traced back to what else but the black plague. It had killed a third of the population of France between 1347-1352. And when you combine that with the body count in the Hundred Years' War, it's estimated that France lost half of its population in the 14th century.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dang.
MARCUS PARKS
That is to say the central government of France hadn't even come close to recovering by the time Gilles de Rais was born. By the time of Gilles de Rais, France was more of a collection of individual leaders who levied their own taxes, coined their own currency, and enforced their own laws.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Isn't that also kind of what happened in Italy?
MARCUS PARKS
I have no idea.
BEN KISSEL
We'll get onto that.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm not going to say yes nor no because I have not studied Italy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know either.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't even know what time period you're talking about.
BEN KISSEL
Italy is shaped like a boot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's where I'm at right now. Italy is shaped like a boot and France is shaped like a butt that's sitting down.
MARCUS PARKS
The way I could kind of describe it is that imagine if all 50 states were their own small... Like if states rights were taken to their extreme.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And America was just a loose confederacy. And every time we went to war, the president would have to go to every single state and beg them to join in on the war and often pay them to do so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, you can get someone to go to war so easy nowadays. It's almost too easy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean but the guys that are volunteering real hard, like too easily, you don't want them. That's the problem.
BEN KISSEL
That is the problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because a lot of them are just human body shields because they're just like 250 lbs of Applebee's batter with a bunch of AR-15s they bought from the fucking from the Tor web.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I heard they're very easy to use.
BEN KISSEL
They are easy to use. And the new ads for the army are hilarious because they recognize how fat and lazy we all are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And they're literally just like you like to play video games, right? You want to fucking kill somebody?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
BEN KISSEL
You're in.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in France there was a king, yes, kind of.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
But France was by no means unified and marauding bands of brigands pillaged, raped, and stole their way across the country without fear of reprimand because the nobles cared very little for the peasants, even though that was supposed to be their whole fucking point was to protect the people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but it also seems like the nobles sort of kind of understood if we get in the way in the armies, they'll kill us too.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so they're just in their castles, just like looks bad out there.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just watching like ooh, don't do that.
MARCUS PARKS
Well likewise, the military commanders of France at this time who answered more to the nobles who paid them than to the king at court, they were no better than bandits. And in fact Gilles de Rais is one of those noblemen, he was no more, no less brutal than his contemporaries on the battlefield.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He truly was a man of his times.
MARCUS PARKS
For French nobles, the point of war was not service to god or country but rather the collection of more wealth, more land, and more everything.
BEN KISSEL
More bones!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
More bones. It's because it's destabilized, right? So they all are kind of acting as if they are their own mini kingdoms.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So everybody is taking whatever resources that aren't nailed down to kind of protect themselves from each other.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean that's a very generous way of looking at it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm saying as a man who has again led many campaigns in medieval Europe, I understand why one would do as such.
BEN KISSEL
Again.
MARCUS PARKS
And as a man who sees very much the parallels between this and say modern times, that it seems like a bunch of assholes and gigantic castles, hoarding wealth like a bunch of fucking dragons for no reason other than that they have a mental illness that fucking makes them collect wealth above all and fuck the people!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is more of an ungenerous view of the same circumstances.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Italy, isn't it shaped like a boot? Isn't it though? Isn't it shaped like a boot?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I won't tell you you're wrong.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean this was all in service of a pointless decadence that would lead straight to the guillotine a couple of centuries later in the French Revolution for these fucking useless noblemen.
BEN KISSEL
Guillotine!
MARCUS PARKS
But back in the 15th century, this meaningless indulgence at the top seemed to encourage the base instincts of the soldiers on the ground. Here, in my best Dan Carlin history voice-
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, this is gonna be good.
MARCUS PARKS
Is a description of the horrors that a peasant in the 15th century had to look forward to when soldiers were spotted on the horizon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now we will need some light sort of like History Channel filler in post.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's something to really fill this out.
BEN KISSEL
Something real nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely not. When Dan Carlin speaks, Dan Carlin speaks into silence.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Because the words must be appreciated.
BEN KISSEL
I thought Dan Carlin didn't talk for like five years and then talked a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It seems like it's more the opposite, that he's talking a little bit over those five years one day at a time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He'll say like one sentence into a microphone and go (sigh) sheesh, work done for the day. And then just go back. He's living a charmed life. I love him.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He's living a wonderful life.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
All right, here we go. They took women and children without difference of age or sex, raping the women and girls. They killed the husband and father in the presence of their wives and daughters, they took nurses and left the children behind so that they died for want of food.
BEN KISSEL
So good, Marcus.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you. They took pregnant women and chained them so that they gave birth in chains. The children were allowed to die without baptism and the mother and child were thrown into the river. They took priests and monks, chained them up in various ways, and beat them so that they were maimed for life and driven out of their mind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the drop, you do the drop.
MARCUS PARKS
Some were roasted alive, others had their teeth ripped out, others were beaten with huge sticks, and none were freed until they have given far more money than they could afford. That doesn't sound like a very good time now, does it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's great!
BEN KISSEL
Wow. No, it doesn't!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is the most obscure on the money deep cut podcast reference that's around.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Really, really well done.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is great.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you very much.
BEN KISSEL
Very well done.
MARCUS PARKS
He's my hero, what can I say?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's so great.
BEN KISSEL
This is my impression of Dan Carlin doing an impression of Marcus Parks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, he's a home right now going like-
BEN KISSEL
I know what I sound like!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't think I sound like that.
BEN KISSEL
Dan, the lasagna is ready. And I told you if you talk in your radio voice at dinner one more time, we're getting a divorce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honey, I told you, I wish it was different.
MARCUS PARKS
But when it came to contemporary medieval accounts of what was actually happening in France, let's hear a section from a medieval text read by Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"The countryside is desecrated and shepherds are slaughtered. There in the dung without a bed were the dead sleeping one on top of the other in piles. Many noble shepherdesses were left alone without their lovers. So many heads cut off, so many feet, so many arms without hands."
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kinda a lot.
BEN KISSEL
It sounds like a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"I think there was never so much as a shedding of human blood nor slaughter more cruel." Not since Tuesday.
BEN KISSEL
Not since Tuesday. Did you feminize the word shepherd to shepherdess?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They say shepherdesses.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I never heard of that before.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's a direct translation from the French which is probably something more like (French gibberish).
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's shepherds and shepherdesses.
BEN KISSEL
I didn't know there was a female version of the shepherd. I thought they were all shepherds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Back in the day gender wasn't as complex as it is now.
BEN KISSEL
Oh is that right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so yeah, back in the day some shepherds, they had ding dongs, but other shepherdesses, they had woohoos.
BEN KISSEL
Little red riding hoods.
MARCUS PARKS
Now this savagery was of no concern to the nobility of France. During the 15th century, every castle as Henry said was its own little kingdom. Every castle had its own little private army.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's cool.
MARCUS PARKS
And there in the castle, the nobility ate lavishly while the peasants starved.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just gotta be on the right side of that lance.
BEN KISSEL
What kind of animals would you put in your moat?.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want alligators definitely.
MARCUS PARKS
Alligators, yeah, that'd be good. Hippos if I could get them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Hippos would be great. Beavers. They build their own walls. They're working for you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But now I'm the one, I need control of the walls.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no, beavers, they build the walls across the river. They they would actually-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ruin the moat.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they would ruin the moat.
BEN KISSEL
They'd fuck up the moat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They'd just treat a ditch. Which is still useful but honestly-
BEN KISSEL
I'll train cats to swim. Cats.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I kinda just wanna put dudes in the moat.
BEN KISSEL
That's would be great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You remember the lady I showed on the stream who lived in the lake?
BEN KISSEL
Yes, the lady in the water.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That lady. What if it's those guys, it's dudes, but they got guns.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome, perfect. Dudes with guns.
MARCUS PARKS
And if you want to see that of course, patreon.com/lastpodcastontheleft. We do the stream every Tuesday live at 8 PM PST.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Integrated marketing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Integrated marketing.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the measure of a successful noble was not in the morale of his people or even necessarily in how a deputy was in battle. Rather when it came to the respect of his fellow nobles, it was all in how decadent and luxurious the life of that noble could appear to be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kind of like Instagram.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like Instagram!
BEN KISSEL
Why is it like Instagram?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause you're seeing everybody else's highlight reel. We're not really seeing who they are as a person.
BEN KISSEL
That is true.
MARCUS PARKS
Good point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But nobles, I feel like it's the concept of constantly trying to separate themselves from the hoi polloi.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And like we're chosen to be this role, so we kind of live this extravagant life because it's what we were chosen to do for you to look up to us aspirationally.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And it's also about competing with the other nobles. Again, if you want to compare it to today, it's like you got a big boat, fuck you. I got a big boat inside my big boat.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And my big boat inside my big boat also has caviar.
BEN KISSEL
The turducken of boats. Also hoi polloi, a fantastic strip club where all the girls look like bobbers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's bobbers?
MARCUS PARKS
What's a bobber?
BEN KISSEL
Fishing bobbers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. Weird. That's surreal.
BEN KISSEL
They're round.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is literally-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They're hoi polloi, they're gonna be round.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just don't understand.
BEN KISSEL
Hoi polloi with the girls that look like they're round.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh so you're saying that-
BEN KISSEL
It's a round-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's doesn't even make sense because lures are skinny.
BEN KISSEL
No, bobbers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They look like worms.
MARCUS PARKS
No, bobbers.
BEN KISSEL
Move on.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean he could have just as easily said beach balls, he could have said basketballs. He could have said any other kind of ball.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was interesting.
BEN KISSEL
No, because they're also wet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanna bring you to my Jungian therapist and have you say the same sentence.
BEN KISSEL
They're wet. That's why I said bobbers.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as author Jean Benedetti put it so succinctly, French society was like a man who, finding the world hostile, retired to his gilded chamber to masturbate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh, you're talking about me in 2020.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Well of course some nobles took this decadence to violent extremes that none of the others dared dream of. And that brings us to Gilles de Rais.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Setting the tone, setting the scene. Now we're meeting the man. I don't know what he sounds like yet.
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles de Rais was born in the year 1404, appropriately in the black tower of his family castle at Champtocé.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. Cool.
BEN KISSEL
Very good.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you. De Rais was born to two nobles named Guy Laval and Marie de Craon, as a result of a complicated legal dispute over the property between noble families that is far too complicated to go into here.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some would say boring.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, all right.
MARCUS PARKS
All you need to know is that by the end of it, Gilles de Rais was the sole heir to his first of three massive fortunes.
BEN KISSEL
Dang.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's exactly as you imagined the sole heir of many medieval fortunes would be as.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Gilles was therefore raised by servants in what was referred to as quote "the cocoon of luxury", a little prince who had little to no experience with what the world was like outside of his pampered existence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't understand why is my milk warm?
BEN KISSEL
It's more Melania Trump.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't understand, why is no one praising me yet today?
BEN KISSEL
I think it's good. I mean we'll work on it. It's a four part series.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm bouncing.
BEN KISSEL
No, I know, I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is baby Gilles.
MARCUS PARKS
Baby Gilles, of course.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Baby Gilles.
BEN KISSEL
That's good. Okay, we're getting there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just a little baby.
BEN KISSEL
Now we're talking.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, now we're getting there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gimme the titty.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you want my teat? I've been a man this whole time, buddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it was said that Gilles was to sleep in an airy but not windy room looking out to the east so that he might be gently awoken by the sun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hello, mister sun. Are you the one with the titty?
BEN KISSEL
Now that is Spanish.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love mister sun.
BEN KISSEL
That's not...
MARCUS PARKS
It's closer.
BEN KISSEL
Is it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love mister sun!
MARCUS PARKS
As long as it's not Jamaican, I'm happy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe you should wait.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it was ordered that he be bathed often but not too often, lest his skin be softened.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, you need the skin just leathery enough to be a man about a horse. But you also need to be soft enough to be touched by a fine maiden which is the line I ride.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Feel these hands.
BEN KISSEL
We all have very soft hands.
MARCUS PARKS
Sweaty. They're very sweaty. Actually my hands are quite rough.
BEN KISSEL
Well they've softened since you've been off the field.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he ate consommés of veal, beef, and partridge but did not eat fish because it was said to make children to calm.
BEN KISSEL
Too calm?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
BEN KISSEL
Cause they wanted them all wild?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well I mean listen to the drinks they gave him. He consumed the standard noble child's beverage which was five parts boiled sugar water and one part French wine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, that's cool.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa. So they were getting hammered.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well the wine didn't get you drunk like it used to, I don't think.
BEN KISSEL
I think it must have.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I think back in the day, I don't think wine and beer and all that was quite as strong as it is... It's not like an IPA or anything.
BEN KISSEL
You don't think so?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
No, he's not a total douchebag. He's not drinking IPAs. Save it for Holden McNeely. But why wouldn't the wine be... I feel like it's still the same thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I might be talking out of my ass, I think it's because they just drank it more regularly. That's what I would say. Because they drank it because it was better than a lot of the water most of the time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they drink beer more than they drank water. Or at least that's what the commercials told me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Water!
BEN KISSEL
I love that one. Yeah, that was nice when friends used to call friends on rotary phones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember.
MARCUS PARKS
Concerning Gilles' behavior, he was also unpredictable, physically aggressive, and destructive.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah because he's fucking sugar high and drunk on wine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is what's his name? Lord Farquaad from Shrek.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It soon became apparent to everyone that they were raising a psychopathic monster with no boundaries. And if anyone tried punishing him, they themselves would be punished even more harshly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's fun.
BEN KISSEL
Are we on our David Miscavige series still?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no. We're setting up for our future Barron Trump series.
MARCUS PARKS
However it was also clear that Gilles de Rais was brilliant. And by the time he was an adult, he was considered one of the most well educated men of his era. He was tutored in sciences, art, music, literature, and theater of course, which we'll get to later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
When Gilles was still a child though, both of his parents died within the same year. His father in a very Robert Baratheon-esque death was gored by a wild boar while hunting, died slowly in bed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm pretty certain he must have just taken that. Because there are certain things, he said characters were inspired by history as he researched.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. George R. R. Martin, you mean.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And that sounds like that is his death.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's absolutely Robert Baratheon's death. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, gored by a boar. That's kind of a fun way to go.
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh. I mean that's the thing is that you eventually just have to sit in bed and you shit yourself to death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you just shake until you die.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It doesn't eat you, huh?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no. It's just gores you and then it runs away.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it goes like... And then it leaves you just sitting there and then you are literally gored to death.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Then you just bleed out and shit, huh?
MARCUS PARKS
And his mother's cause of death, unknown.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's not important. Women died so often then.
BEN KISSEL
Cold. Maybe she just had the flu.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe. Well it said that she left after the father died and remarried. There's one record that says that she remarried but then she died very soon after. His mother is very mysterious.
BEN KISSEL
Can't you just die back in the day from a paper cut, it gets infected, you're screwed? They don't have penicillin or anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You get hit by a cart.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can get fucking chomped on by a horse. You can fucking get one of five different diseases we know to be the plague, you could die like that.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can die just of bad milk.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. A horse could kill you like seven different ways.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome. Options are limitless.
MARCUS PARKS
What we do know is that after both parents were in the ground, Gilles had only one living relative besides his insignificant younger brother who really only interacted with Gilles when Gilles became a theatrical producer in his 30s. And his brother wanted to direct.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is a story as old as time.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean really this story as you'll come to see, you'll see Gilles de Rais is like a combination of like Harvey Weinstein, Ted Bundy, and Jared from Subway.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Top three.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My top three. That's my dream blunt rotation.
BEN KISSEL
So I've got a date with this guy Gilles. He says he's Weinstein, Fogle, and Bundy all in one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh. Does he have a brother? Yeah but he's insignificant. He just wanted to play songs. He's Roger Clinton.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, Roger Clinton.
MARCUS PARKS
Or Billy Carter.
BEN KISSEL
I know, Billy Beer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But when it came to possible legal guardians after the death of Gilles' parents, the most obvious yet worst choice was his mother's father, Jean de Craon. Everyone knew this was a bad idea because de Craon was described as little better than a bandit who had no regard for anyone but himself, nor did he follow the laws of god or man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My favorite Craon was The Silmarillion.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. I was going to do my Craon joke which was not to mention how much he scuffed up the floor.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very good.
BEN KISSEL
So we are really-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're really good today.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And if you ate him your poop would be alarming.
BEN KISSEL
It's a 1-2-3 punch!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Boom, boom, boom! Content! Triple headed tornado!
BEN KISSEL
Comedy podcast.
MARCUS PARKS
Well when Gilles de Rais' father was on his deathbed, he said whatever you do, do not let Jean de Craon raise my son. These wishes were of course not met. And it's likely that de Craon's influence led to Gilles de Rais' unfettered brutality.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You never want your last words to be like no, why are you laughing? I was serious about, why are you laughing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was a bad guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah he was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then he trained Gilles from a very young age. He was kind of the first example, he was the ultimate corrupt motherfucker to use the most dirty handed tricks that were technically still like of common use, people would use what he used.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But mostly it was in bad taste.
MARCUS PARKS
They would use them sparingly and de Craon use them all the time. That was his only tool in his toolkit.
BEN KISSEL
What was that one guy that trained Batman? Played by Liam Neeson.
MARCUS PARKS
That would be-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Qui-Gon Jinn.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, Qui-Gon Jinn.
MARCUS PARKS
Ra's al Ghul.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, kinda like that guy. Kinda like Jar Jar Binks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kinda like Jar Jar Binks.
BEN KISSEL
Italy is like a boot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just keep saying Jar Jar. Italy is like a boot. Keep that on a rotation. This is good.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Jean de Craon raised Gilles to believe that their family was above morality, just so long as it was to their benefit. The closest analog in Game of Thrones would be the Boltons, amoral, calmly savage, and ruthlessly ambitious. This would of course make Gilles Ramsay Bolton, cruel, oddly charming in a serial killer sort of way, and reckless but no less skilled in warfare.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
To that point, just as Jean de Craon was giving his grandson the worst possible moral compass one can give to a wealthy brat, Gilles de Rais was being trained for not just command but battle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Jean de Craon must've really scuffed up the floors when he was walking around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, Craon.
BEN KISSEL
The floors are scuffy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mr. Craon! (French gibberish)
MARCUS PARKS
See for all their pampering, some nobles did participate in on the ground warfare and Gilles was a prime example. Starting at the age of 11, Gilles began training in 33 lbs of chainmail and a full set of plate armor.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the sort of stuff that we think of when we think of a medieval knight today.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know that they are really not as... They are more mobile in that armor than you'd think they would be.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You've watched modern armored fighting, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's really fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's my favorite because that's how I want to work out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Except I got too many hairs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, yeah. It would pull.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With the chains.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, the chainmail.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It'd be ripping at my fucking chest. Because you know how thick my hair is.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, I don't even think you can wear a watch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No I can't, it hurts.
MARCUS PARKS
See I use chainmail to clean my cast iron skillet, it's actually very good for it, it brings up all the-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I'll actually send it to you. You're gonna love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You clean the fucking most heavy metal sponge possible?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's a heavy metal chainmail sponge. It fucking works wonderfully.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa. It's just leprosy
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I have the Sponge Mommy and the Sponge Daddy, gonna make them kiss.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, make them fuck.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Sponge Baby.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sponge Baby.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the thing is that I really love the feel of chainmail and I know I want to buy some chainmail. But I know if I bought it I'd just wear it around the house all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're allowed to.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you can do that. It's your house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you're married.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I guess.
BEN KISSEL
Actually it might be good exercise.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually it would be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just to have the general weight on your shoulders might be nice. Cause you're carrying Carolina at the concerts.
BEN KISSEL
And honestly, well Carolina obviously, she'll want to divorce you when you do that. But it's hard as shit, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, whatever. Exactly. Being like you will never get through these emotional armor that I'm wearing.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then she can try to serve your divorce papers while I have this metallic visor on.
MARCUS PARKS
Can't do it.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. And then she can serve divorce papers when we're doing our panel at WonderCon.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Ben, you mentioned shitting and how difficult shitting would be.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. I did!
MARCUS PARKS
There was a whole protocol to that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean for peeing, most of the time they just pissed themselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Because it wasn't really worth it and things are kind of dirty anyway, so who cares?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you already reek.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you already reek.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's gonna be uncomfortable but you're gonna be fine. Shitting though, you can't have a big deuce back there.
BEN KISSEL
Unhealthy.
MARCUS PARKS
It's gonna fuck with your mobility.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can't fight alongside the holy matron of France while you're sitting in a puddle of diarrhea.
BEN KISSEL
No, no.
MARCUS PARKS
No. So when they did need to take a dump, their squires would actually reach down and lift up their chain mail and would have to sit there as they squatted and let one drop.
BEN KISSEL
It's like a lady on her wedding day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just so you know, that reminds me we're starting an intern program here at LPN. And it's really gonna help. But mostly it's about spotting dookie pants.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whenever one of us has to go. Because you can see when we scrunch up our face like a toddler. That's how they know. They run, they pull down our pants so we can free shit.
BEN KISSEL
That's great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's gonna be nice. College credits.
BEN KISSEL
Someone actually still dropping into the chainmail then.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe you have to horse it out, push it out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Horse it out?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, really gotta splash it a good distance from your body.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm happy to be alive now. I hate Twitter and stuff but like I'm fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Me too. Yeah. Twitter, I'll just not look at the phone.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Fine. But when it came to weaponry, Gilles was trained with 10 ft lances ending in metal spearheads, he knew how to use swords, daggers, truncheons, axes.
BEN KISSEL
Cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
By the time he made his debut in public life in 1420, ie his first battle, Gilles was ready.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, nepo babies suck now, dude. They don't have any skills.
BEN KISSEL
No they don't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's fucking cool. I would respect a lot more trust fund kids if they came out of it with full warfare like medieval level training.
MARCUS PARKS
If they knew how to use an ax.
BEN KISSEL
I mean nepo babies have the ability to make us think that they are victims of being rich.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know.
BEN KISSEL
Which is my favorite twist that I've seen so far.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the greatest power of all.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's a good twist. But I would also like them to use axes. But not on me or on anybody innocent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know. Well at the same time, I like the new story. Whatever they do, I will read it and go whoa. Like I'll be interested.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Oh Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it'd be bad, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. So he's 14 years old at this time.
MARCUS PARKS
He's in his early to mid teens, somewhere around there. Yeah, I mean he's about 13, 14.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Show me the titty.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I mean I was thinking Heath Ledger in A Knights Tale.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. (British accent) I'm a knight and everybody thinks I'm handsome. Right? Was he British in that?
BEN KISSEL
Actually...
MARCUS PARKS
Actually...
BEN KISSEL
We just got written up in Men's Health and they said that you are a comedian... If a comedy podcaster was made in a lab, they said that was you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And I agreed with them 100%.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm pretty certain the article was written by a bot.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I think so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it was written by a robot.
MARCUS PARKS
I think so because it seems like it was a list of podcasts that were popular like five years ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's still us.
BEN KISSEL
But I agree with that. And you're coming in today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Show me the titty. Show me the titty.
MARCUS PARKS
All right.
BEN KISSEL
It holds up. AI has not been wrong yet and it's not wrong now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, it worked for Adam Sandler.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Gilles participated in a successful campaign to resolve an unknown yet probably meaningless dispute between two noble families that resulted in the deaths of dozens, if not hundreds of people. Gilles then of course returned to his castle to revel in decadence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
This was actually somewhat of a normal pattern for French nobles. You'd go out, you'd kill a bunch of people, you'd probably fuck up your own peasants for a little bit, you'd let the other army fuck up your presents a little bit, you'd kill dozens upon dozens upon dozens of people, then you'd go back to your castle and eat gooseneck for the next six days.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like all of it feels like stressful.
BEN KISSEL
It does.
MARCUS PARKS
It's very stressful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Even the big meals seem kind of stressful and I like a big meal.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Partially it's like everybody's there-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's like here's a bowl of sparrow's feet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would eat that but I kinda wanna be alone. At that point I'm tired, I'm burnt out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that's what I do at the end of touring and stuff, night horse comes out, I'll order like $90 worth of Chinese food for myself.
MARCUS PARKS
Did you say night horse?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, night horse is when the food comes when I change into a man that feeds, that needs different than the healthy man I was during the day.
MARCUS PARKS
I get it.
BEN KISSEL
You self describe as night horse when you're hungry after 10 PM?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This has already come up, we've talked about this.
BEN KISSEL
I remember that.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't remember night horse at all.
BEN KISSEL
I remember night horse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It comes upon me. But I want to be alone. Because still with these meals, you still gotta entertain.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just got done killing everybody, I'm out of juice because we did a whole like group thump on a bunch of pilgrims. And now what am I supposed to do? Now I gotta eat in front of all y'all while the jester, I gotta maintain the jester because he's not funny, I gotta kill him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know how difficult it is going to find another one?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But you know when you go home and you eat and yes, because I completely understand, but you want the TV on, you want Guy's Grocery Games, you want Triple D.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I don't wanna entertain.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but there was no Netflix, there was no TV. You have to do live theater and chill.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know. There's tapestries.
MARCUS PARKS
You watch food shows while you eat?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, of course. It's like watching porn while you fuck. Sometimes it really does, it helps you get really hungry for the food that you're eating.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting.
BEN KISSEL
You don't do that?
MARCUS PARKS
No. I don't watch cooking shows, they're boring as fuck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta watch a cooking show and then what I do is sadly, this is really true, I'll get a food that obviously resembles nothing like the fancy cool food that they're eating.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It'll be like a bowl of cereal but in my mind I kinda pretend that it's the food that they're eating.
BEN KISSEL
You don't watch Triple D?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're all different.
BEN KISSEL
We are all different.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're all different in our own way.
BEN KISSEL
We are all different.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know Italy is a boot. I'm a comedy podcaster made in a lab.
BEN KISSEL
I know, I know. And he doesn't watch fucking Triple D.
MARCUS PARKS
And I got a brain full of craggy rocks.
BEN KISSEL
How much Guy Fieri have you watched in your life, do you think? Hours.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe 10 minutes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting, wow.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he can still consort with you!
BEN KISSEL
It's amazing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I know him as a character but that's it.
BEN KISSEL
He's a little bit more than that but...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is. He's a man, he's a father.
BEN KISSEL
Producer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And a volunteer, he's a chef, he's a restaurateur, he's a business owner.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you, Henry. Absolutely correct.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Soon to be president.
BEN KISSEL
I'll take him.
MARCUS PARKS
I have nothing against him at all. I appreciated it when he followed Rage Against The Machine on tour for like 6 weeks. I appreciated that< that was fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's anti-establishment.
MARCUS PARKS
He is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Until he becomes the establishment and then we'll see what happens when the long arm of Guy Fieri comes for us all.
BEN KISSEL
He would have to do something real bad for me not to defend him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Well-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's real bad?
BEN KISSEL
Catering Epstein Island. I'm Guy Fieri and I'm rolling out to America's places where people have sex with young people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm glad that we let it roll out.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm glad too, yeah. Well pretty soon after Gilles' first battle, his grandfather, Jean de Craon, decided it was time for Gilles to get married.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yay! Good for him.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the question of Gilles de Rais' sexuality has been the subject of much controversy throughout the years. We definitely know that Gilles was not heterosexual because it was said multiple times that Gilles had no interest in women whatsoever. In fact some of the conspiracies that have sprung up around his conviction for hundreds of child murders and his subsequent death, they assert that he was framed and killed because he was gay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well one of the reasons why he was framed.
MARCUS PARKS
One of the reasons. I personally do not believe this to be true, nor do I believe that Gilles de Rais was gay. Gilles de Rais was a pedophile, full stop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And was only sexually attracted to children. Didn't matter, both sexes. To go from 1 to 100 here, his servants said that the main difference in how he treated boys and girls was that he took more pleasure in having sex with the neck stump of girls he decapitated than he did in quote "using their natural orifice in the normal manner." While boys, he just did whatever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He was a man of different tastes and different flavors. We're all made of multitudes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a spectrum. Love is a spectrum.
MARCUS PARKS
Love's a spectrum.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This house chooses love.
BEN KISSEL
This house chooses love indeed. He's kinda got Gary Glitter tendencies.
MARCUS PARKS
Far worse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But far worse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's worse, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So Gary can feel good about that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He really can. Let me call him.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So suffice to say, Gilles de Rais' marriage was not what you'd call successful. See if a woman marrying in medieval times had the best of luck, she'd have a husband who was at the very least kind and they might have something that resembled love eventually, like the Starks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Security grows into love.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Doesn't it? This is why I keep you safe from the pillagin hordes, Carmelita.
BEN KISSEL
Carmelita?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah, sweet Carmelita. You haven't bore me a son? Unfortunately I'm gonna have to cut your tits off.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Well I'm one of the nice ones.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, so nice is probably just they don't get killed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Nice is like they are cordial.
BEN KISSEL
Cordial.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's some love back in the day, I feel like there was something. Who knows?
MARCUS PARKS
Every once in a while.
BEN KISSEL
I would hope so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Ned and Catelyn Stark, they were fond of each other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were fake but yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's not real.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They must've had love back then too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
I would say a fondness.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But for others they were matched with men like Gilles de Rais. In this case we have Catherine de Thouars. And even though she was a distant cousin of Gilles, which violated the church's laws on consanguinity, her family estates bordered the lands owned by Jean de Craon.
BEN KISSEL
Wait, they used to call bro-sis love conskuinshishushy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they made it sound fancy. But yeah, that's just them kissing cousins.
MARCUS PARKS
No, cousins marrying each other is consanguinity. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it was against all the rules which is why for a long time their marriage was shunned. That's why as we keep building the case for whether or not the crimes of Gilles de Rais were real, it's more about where does the man come from? What are other signs that show the depravity of the dude?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everybody said our crew is against cousins fucking.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't like it. Other royal families do it, whatever with them. Again, good for them, whatever they like. But we don't do it. And they specifically, they had many options. He was an extremely... The potentiality of his kingdom was massive. He could have gotten anybody. And the fact that he wanted to keep it in the family was an immediate showing of like oh this is a deviancy that started to grow from early on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well there's also a practical side to it as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Because Jean de Craon's lands bordered the lands of Catherine de Thouars'. So a match with his grandson, it was too good to pass up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I did cousin marriageing in Crusader Kings.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have to.
MARCUS PARKS
You have to. And so in November of 1420 when Gilles was in his early teens, he rode to the castle Tiffauges and kidnapped Catherine de Thouars. He then terrorized... I'm doing the best I fucking can, man.
BEN KISSEL
No, you're doing great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're doing really good.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm doing the best I can, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
As soon as I heard that I just thought of I just wish men were more romantic like they used to be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You're mine now!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come here, woman! Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
He then terrorized a monk into performing the ceremony because of the consanguineous nature of the marriage. But in her marriage, Catherine was vaguely lucky because the marriage was one of the few times that she had to actually be in the presence of Gilles de Rais. Now that's not to say that he wasn't physically and mentally abusive to her when they appeared at the standard festivals, baptisms, and weddings. But most of the time he left her to live at the castle Pouzauges where Gilles never went. Now they did have a child 10 years after they were married.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which speaks to a lot because that's like a lifetime in medieval times to wait to have kids.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But that conception was certainly not a romantic endeavor and had more to do with securing Catherine's lands and producing the obligatory heir more than anything.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah cause I don't think he ever saw his child.
MARCUS PARKS
No. He had no interest whatsoever.
BEN KISSEL
You think they did it with the sheet? Little hole in a sheet?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that when they did it, it was either perfunctory or it was extremely brutal.
BEN KISSEL
He was probably looking at a bunch of kids.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I would imagine extremely brutal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now of course the marriage between Gilles and Catherine wasn't the only land deal being made through a marriage and it certainly wasn't the only one that involved violence on the part of the de Rais family. In the early 1420s Jean de Craon's wife died, so he decided to remarry. And in order to consolidate land and power even more, Jean de Craon married Catherine de Thouars' grandmother, Anne de Sillé. Anne de Sillé.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Who?
BEN KISSEL
He's a crayon, she's a marker. Opposites fucking attract, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow. I am now seeing in your mind.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I saw a collection, I saw the image of a giant crayon with the crown on it and I saw a lady with... I saw boobies on a marker, obviously.
MARCUS PARKS
Obviously.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I saw long hair on the marker.
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
When you smell my wife, you get high. Remember that, when markers used to make you high?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I remember. Oh yeah, I loved it. I loved it. And then they ended up making the markers that smell good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I like the good good smelling marker.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The scratch and sniff one.
MARCUS PARKS
The great marker was the best marker.
BEN KISSEL
They don't do it anymore though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. It's because the chemicals probably caused us all to be sick.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, look at us.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. Well when Jean de Craon married on the Anne de Sillé, that granted him the castles Tiffauges and Pouzauges.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. However these castles would not be passed to Gilles upon Jean de Craon's death. So Jean had to brute force his way around the law and Gilles de Rais was about to learn an important lesson. Jean kidnapped the wife of the man whom those castles were supposed to pass to after his death and told her that if her husband didn't give up the castles Tiffauges and Pouzauges, he would sew her up in a sack and throw her in the river.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's called negotiating.
BEN KISSEL
Do we know if the husband likes her?
MARCUS PARKS
I mean it's a matter of honor more than anything.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He should have got the castles.
BEN KISSEL
It's more just like that's my wife, you don't do that to my wife, I'm the only one that can hate her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, she just died. The dude was gonna get these other castles and then he took the woman that had the castles attached to it and just being like well you're my wife now.
MARCUS PARKS
It wasn't more you're my wife now as like sign over these castles to me or else I'm gonna show you up in a sack and throw you in the river.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, negotiations have to start somewhere.
MARCUS PARKS
But she called his bluff.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
She refused. He did not sew her up in a sack and throw in the river.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
So to try and negotiate a peaceful end, the captive's husband sent three emissaries including his own brother to rescue her. But they were thrown in the dungeon to quote "rot without food or drink."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now we're just collecting family.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Did they also used that dungeon as a bathroom? Have you seen that, like the toilet dungeons that existed back in the day?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, where people would shit above the toilet.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Literally. It was nasty. You don't wanna be down there.
MARCUS PARKS
No. Well finally though, with both his brother and his wife in captivity, the rightful heir to the castles Tiffauges and Pouzauges gave up and handed over the rights to the castles in addition to a ransom. He then reported the behavior to the crown in hopes of some sort of punishment for Jean de Craon's behavior.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he went and tattled.
MARCUS PARKS
But to the point of the king having little real power at this time in France to police the nobles, when the court sent a royal messenger to de Craon's castle, de Craon had the messenger brutally beaten and just sent him back to the king and said that's what I think about that.
BEN KISSEL
Like Jamal Khashoggi.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Jamal Khashoggi?
BEN KISSEL
You don't know that story? The Saudi. The Saudi prince who killed the journalist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh, I didn't know. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This would be different than that.
BEN KISSEL
It's similar.
MARCUS PARKS
But I mean he did just kill-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, it's similar.
BEN KISSEL
Kill the messenger.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, he killed the messenger. But this guy wasn't killed, he was sent back to the king.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was sent back though.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome. Back to the king.
MARCUS PARKS
Brutally beaten. And when the court issued a fine for the whole incident, de Craon simply didn't pay and there was no consequence whatsoever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's a lesson that a lot of men have learned over time for a long time, that if you just don't pay your bills, it's actually sometimes very difficult for them to come get that money. It's true. Not for us, actual rich people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yes, actual rich people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, they're smart.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Gilles de Rais learned an incredibly important lesson from his grandfather during this entire escapade. See most noblemen didn't conduct business through kidnappings, ransoms, and savage beatings. They only did it sometimes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he was acting like a mob boss.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was doing the thing where like this is how I do stuff and most of the time people just don't want to deal with it.
MARCUS PARKS
But Jean de Craon was teaching his grandson that a nobleman could conduct himself in such a way if he was so inclined. And Gilles de Rais was very much inclined towards activities far beyond kidnapping and simple beatings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It titillated him. He immediately understood because he jumped right in. That's why Jean de Craon was like super into Gilles. Like he loved him. Whatever their version, I don't even know if it was love, but he saw a kindred spirit and took extra attention to make sure that Gilles was gonna be just like him.
MARCUS PARKS
So because his grandfather had ignored the laws of god and man, Gilles de Rais was now heir to three vast fortunes. And if Gilles believed that he could treat noblemen in this matter, just imagine what he could then allow himself to do to the peasants. Now once Gilles was of legal age and was able to control the fortunes he'd already inherited, he began ignoring his grandfather altogether. And while we don't know exactly when he began murdering children, I think it's fair to say that he probably at least dabbled in heinous activities after he was answerable to no one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean his whole life of never being answerable to nobody.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then all of a sudden you're raised by a truly corrupt individual. And I'm certain there was plenty of abuse being bandied about in his way of doing it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But pretty soon after Gilles came into his own, he would be called off to battle where he could spread his misery across France with every other nobleman who was involved in the last phase of the Hundred Years' War.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
116 Years' War.
BEN KISSEL
Please. Was he actually facing battle?
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
BEN KISSEL
So that's interesting that they actually sent the noblemen out to truly fight.
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely. Well it was their choice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they wanted to go.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it brought great honor, it brought bragging rights.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And just that's what you were trained to do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was trained to kill. And so now they put him out there to go kill and he really took to it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He thought it was very fun. Now I'm sure most of you know that the Hundred Years' War was not a war that lasted for 100 years straight.
BEN KISSEL
How long did it last for?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
116 Years' War! And that's what we're doing! And that's why we're changing it!
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
And it was actually not 100 years straight, it was three periods of war. And Gilles de Rais fought in part three.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
There was a couple of decades in between each phase. The first period however had been the most hellish. The Black Death in France began and ended during that phase.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
MARCUS PARKS
And it did not slow down the war a bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What a nightmare, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
In fact, the war only exacerbated the plague because of the thousands of corpses that were created by both the battles and the pillaging. In other words, if the plague didn't get you, the soldiers would.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Weirdly in a way, I bet you in a really fucked up way it actually prevented the spread of plague in certain areas because they just came through and killed everybody that would have got the plague and then it just jumps around. Fun times.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good times.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as how the Hundred Years' War started though, it basically came about because England in the early 14th century controlled much of France through a series of marriages and other royal flufferall that didn't mean jack shit to most people. Then in 1328 the king of France died. But due to the rules of succession involving matrilineal lines and other sundry horseshit, the king of England was suddenly heir to the French throne.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're hearing this here, right.
BEN KISSEL
Wait.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is where it gets complicated. Kissel, just let it through, just let it roll through. That's what I do too. I'm just letting this information just hit my eyeballs.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, let it roll.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His words, the sounds of his words, the vibrations are hitting my eyeballs.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm looking at him, seeing him smiling.
BEN KISSEL
Smiling.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Getting some of that attitude. Understand that what he's saying, he's happy about.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Brain begins to understand all of this information. Still technically on Wikipedia if I need it.
BEN KISSEL
So Henry, we're going to chalk this up to flufferall.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is all flufferall.
BEN KISSEL
This is flufferall, okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Ben, I actually said that word for your benefit in particular because I knew you would attach to the word flufferall.
BEN KISSEL
I love the word flufferall.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all he can think about.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Italy is a boot.
BEN KISSEL
Italy is a boot and flufferall is a fantastic program where we send you a fluffer. If you have a porn... Their hands are always wet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mom and dad aren't kissing anymore?
BEN KISSEL
Flufferall.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Welcome to flufferall. The man who gets your father hard enough to love your mother.
MARCUS PARKS
Well yes, basically a bunch of kings and queens would intermarry between countries for various truces, all sorts of shit.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
There were so many different reasons why they would intermarry. But basically when the king of France died, the king of England was the heir to the throne. And since England already controlled half of France-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is kinda of a snipperoo, right? It's bad, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a mistake.
MARCUS PARKS
It was a mistake because then the king of England had the rights to the rest of France. The French didn't like this.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
They took umbrage to that. So they attacked England and kicked off 116 years of on and off bloodshed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can we cut to a medieval flutes version of All Along The Watchtower? (music plays)
BEN KISSEL
Made in a lab.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My mama raised me! I ain't no test tube baby! I just couldn't suck.
BEN KISSEL
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
Now by the time of Gilles de Rais, 1425, the Great Mortality was almost 100 years in the past. And England was under the rule of King Henry VI, who was at this point not quite 5 years old.
BEN KISSEL
A 5 year old is in charge of all this shit?
MARCUS PARKS
He actually came into power when he was 9 months old.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a very important baby.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
France meanwhile was being ruled by a 22 year old named Charles VII, who was at that time not yet named king because his father had technically disinherited him before he died.
BEN KISSEL
These are all fucking children running the show?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It happens.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, when you noticed that in a underlying... That's when to attack in Crusader Kings III.
BEN KISSEL
God.
MARCUS PARKS
Also happens to Game of Thrones all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But even so, this guy Charles VII was still in power as the dauphin, which is a French word meaning the guy who's next in line to be the king. Now the Hundred Years' War-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but he is a real fan of dough because a lot of those guys were pretty big.
MARCUS PARKS
Dauphin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dauphin!
MARCUS PARKS
Dauphin!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dauphin!
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Well bread is a sign of wealth.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well bread was all the people's food.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now the Hundred Years' War had been reignited 10 years earlier after decades of peace when England invaded Normandy. England had since come to occupy most of northern France, including the cities of Paris and Orléans. So to retake their lands, the call to war was sounded and Gilles de Rais was one of the many who answered.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Remember, history makes you hot, guys.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Both of our wives are hot women that voluntarily turned themselves into nerds.
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So now just understand the new cool thing is to be super into the 116 Years' War.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
The last two weeks the only thing that my wife has been talking about around the house is the Cold War.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Think about that! So when you say this is boring, it's not.
BEN KISSEL
Well isn't that nice?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Become a hot woman in your mind!
BEN KISSEL
There you go. Isn't that fun? And she's using it as an analogy for your marriage. It's like a Cold War.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nah.
BEN KISSEL
Because I feel like we're going through a Cold War.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You guys are more, it's more of an organized, what do they call it? It's a theater of conflict?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, you mean like a demilitarized zone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. It's very much so.
MARCUS PARKS
Well here from author Michel Bataille, or Bat-ay? Bat-eye?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Who cares?
MARCUS PARKS
Michel Bataille, I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bataille. I think it might be Bataille.
MARCUS PARKS
Bataille. Well here is a description of a soldier's life during the war. "There were days of drunkenness after the pillage of an enemy convoy, nights of hunger in which one could not sleep. When one found friends who had been taken prisoner and tortured, in revenge one tortured enemy prisoners to make an example, without hate, with indifference. One brutalized the peasants one met. To avoid being betrayed by them, one needed to treat them worse than the enemy. One hanged many. The population did not get indignant. On the days of a hanging, the condemned formed a line waiting for their turn without anger, without tears, without cries. They helped to put the cord into place. They cooperated in the abominable rights that belong to war."
BEN KISSEL
All right Dan, let's take that back with a little bit less emotion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
BEN KISSEL
It's a little too emotional, Dan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tell me Sherry, did you not fill out the car resignation form? It seems that our DMV notice is late.
BEN KISSEL
Good, good. A little bit less energy, Dan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's good!
BEN KISSEL
Did you have coffee today?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the true unwavering voice of the unbiased historian.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a true radio voice. That is the voice of a true radio professional.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I love Dan Carlin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah of course.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as what Gilles de Rais did in the war, he was not only permitted but encouraged to quench his blood thirst on the battlefield to the point of carnage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what it was for!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So technically though he's being a hero by their standards.
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. If it's true that he's like quote unquote "the world's first serial killer" as they talk about, it was perfectly done for him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. He was a reckless yet still very successful commander. Part of that was because Gilles was in the early days babysat by a more experienced commander at the insistence of Jean de Craon, which he wasn't about to lose his heir after all the bullshit he went through to get those castles. But by 1427, Gilles had enough experience to command on his own. And he used his power and money to help raise five companies for military campaigns in which his boldness worked to his advantage. In one assault on the English stronghold of Lude, Gilles and his company attacked a large solidly built garrison with a sustained cannon bombardment until his army was able to scale the walls for a full on assault.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why you gotta get the siege towers working. You have to eventually send in your fast units, right. Because you gotta muck up all their land units wherever.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Especially if they've got any weird sort of individual high views, right. You're fighting those, then you bring in the siege towers from the side.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right? Cause you have to start the artillery bombing first cause that's how you cover it. Then you come in from the-
BEN KISSEL
Did Gilles do all this while sitting on his heated toilet seat also?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly yes but his heated toilet seat was the back of a man.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it was a person. That's sad.
MARCUS PARKS
Well when the signal to attack was given, Gilles was the first to the top of the wall where he was faced with a famed English captain named Blackburn. Within minutes Gilles' sword had quote "torn a way between the plates of mail and buried itself in the flesh."
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
And Captain Blackburn lay dead at his feet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then he went and he looked over the corpse and he said show me the titty.
BEN KISSEL
The titty. Wow. Made in a lab. Wow!
MARCUS PARKS
Well with their leader dead, English morale collapsed and the castle was taken. Now the English were actually spared but the French collaborators were executed. Gilles then moved on with his men. High on victory, they decided fuck it, let's try taking another castle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's always good to roll with it because you don't give them a chance to set back up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Got you.
MARCUS PARKS
But when the garrison at Le Mans was too tough to take, Gilles and his company returned to court victorious nonetheless.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you already got one. You got one W, that's all he needs.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while Gilles was out making a name for himself, his cousin Georges de La Trémoille had been gaining influence and power at court, having been elevated to a position equivalent to Prime Minister, that of Chamberlain. See Georges immediately recognized that Gilles was a good ally because he was not only handsome and witty but was rich enough to maintain an army. But while Gilles was rubbing elbows with the most powerful people in France and being accepted into their inner circle, those same nobles were fucking up the war because of their own egos. By 1429, the English had taken control of the city of Orléans.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Orléans!
MARCUS PARKS
Orléans. After a battle known as the Day of the Herrings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The disorganized French had tried to attack the English supply lines, they broke a bunch of barrels of fish.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The fish were all over the place and the stench of defeat was of course accompanied by the stench of herring.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Herring!
BEN KISSEL
It's supply lines.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what they did.
BEN KISSEL
It's supply lines.
MARCUS PARKS
It's supply lines.
BEN KISSEL
Always.
MARCUS PARKS
Now nobody really knew what to do at that point because everyone wanted to be the hero, therefore no one was the hero. Nobody was working together. There was no unifying force.
BEN KISSEL
I mean honestly at this point, you gotta freak them out, man. You gotta grab one of those, eat it raw right in front of him. Let them know you're crazy, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah sure. But then they're also like that actually looks good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they just eat the fish too. That's why they had the fish.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they loved all that.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But luckily for the court, the person who arrived to report on the Day of the Herrings-
BEN KISSEL
Yes?
MARCUS PARKS
Was none other than Joan of Arc.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As soon as he saw her, the first thing he said-
BEN KISSEL
Go on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Show me the titty.
BEN KISSEL
Show me the titty. Wait now, so Joan of Arc? This is real?
MARCUS PARKS
This is real.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Joan of Arc.
BEN KISSEL
She showed up here.
MARCUS PARKS
1000% real.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
When she shows up, Gilles de Rais is there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are intertwined in history.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Joan of Arc, because remember one thing I guess we didn't explain but it's one of those things, our king, the French king, is hiding, right? He's hiding because there's a French king and then there's also an English king of France. It's a whole thing. But morale was falling apart.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They didn't know what the fuck to do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Remember at the time period, I watched a really interesting documentary called The Real Joan of Arc that talks about the concept of time. Whoever was winning in a war was on the right side of god.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that meant a lot to the people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because the idea was like so while the French were losing, it was because they lost favor in god's eyes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then that's why they were losing and they were all falling apart. And they had nobody look at.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. And I'm just happy we don't do religious based warfare anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't.
BEN KISSEL
No, not at all.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Joan of Arc biographers tend to ignore the fact that she fought alongside Gilles de Rais, quite possibly the most brutal child murderer in known history. But historical records show that Gilles de Rais saved Joan of Arc's life in battle during the few times that she failed.
BEN KISSEL
Really?
MARCUS PARKS
And was in fact friends with the woman who is now a saint of the Catholic church. In fact, Gilles de Rais' connection to Joan of Arc was why he was famous in France before he was famous for being a child killer.
BEN KISSEL
Wait, you're telling me that the Catholic church has direct ties with someone who might do something wrong with a child?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't believe they'd even try to cover up.
BEN KISSEL
No way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that's a part of the rebuttal to the rebuttal.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is it's a long game to try to remake Gilles de Rais innocent because his connection to Joan of Arc sullied her name.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, interesting. So she's giving him the good rub. It's just like oh he can't be that bad, he hung out with Joan of Arc.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She became the patron saint of the entire country.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is all real.
MARCUS PARKS
Many years later. Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But at the time she was immediately this fucking superstar.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And so since Joan and Gilles were close, it bears getting into the bizarre life of Joan of Arc.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Super weird.
MARCUS PARKS
It gets very strange.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you don't really know, like I went through a couple of sources to try to really... Because the mystical end is really interesting because we know that she believed that she had a direct line to a series of angels.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. For those of you who don't know, Joan of Arc was a peasant who led France's armies
into battle on many occasions after being directed to do so by angels representing god. And she did it all starting at the age of about 16. Now her military prowess is indeed real, there's no myth busting to be had there. Out of her 13 known military engagements, Joan won 9.
BEN KISSEL
Pretty good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It owes mostly to her incredible understanding of artillery placement. That means she was probably fantastic at math.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah and understood angles.
MARCUS PARKS
Cannons. She just knew everything. And she also understood intimidation very well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She did a thing, it's very, very interesting. Because there was a prophecy that was put out amongst the hoi polloi, Kissel, of France, right.
BEN KISSEL
I've been there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The bigger shirts, the bigger, rounder shirts.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the bigger, rounder. The bobbers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, the bobbers. And they believe it might have started with Merlin, that's kind of how they put it too, we'll get to our 'was Merlin real' series eventually. Can't wait to bore you. That's my shit, we're gonna do a whole King Arthur thing.
BEN KISSEL
I'm excited.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'mma drag all you through that shit with me.
MARCUS PARKS
I prefer the documented history but that's just me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh my fucking...
BEN KISSEL
Wow. I can't wait for that series.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm already upset.
BEN KISSEL
That's gonna be fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanna fight. We're gonna come to blows.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, we're gonna have to start that series with ding-ding-ding! Are you ready to rumble?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the prophecy was that a woman will lose France but a virgin shall save her. And this concept of this woman-
BEN KISSEL
Well Gilles wasn't a version though.
MARCUS PARKS
No, Joan.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, Joan was the virgin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Basically you're talking about the woman who lost France, that is a kind of meltdown of the idea of the family lines caused them to lose the throne of France.
MARCUS PARKS
Matrilineal lines.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they said that there was a prophecy, this person is gonna show up and is going to take us to the top. And so at some point this girl arrived, she arrived and she fit the bill. You'd call her sort of vaguely a heretic but she was a true believer, she believed that she had a direct line to god which is both challenging to people-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you had to prove it. You had to prove it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have how she proves it, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Somewhat, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is like she proves it by guessing who's the king in a group of people, like the king hid amongst them.
MARCUS PARKS
Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So there's some kind of talk about what she trained and not actually just some peasant girl? Was she actually of a rich family that she got military training and then some savvy people behind the curtain understood that's the girl we're looking for, that's our Zendaya.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We need her in front because she fits this picture that we're going to do. And then decided, there's that story whether or not, because she showed up and she could jump on a horse, she could use a lance.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they're all like she shouldn't be able to do it. She definitely could read and she shouldn't have been able to read.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Well how'd they prove she was a virgin?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A long process.
MARCUS PARKS
We'll get into that here in a second.
BEN KISSEL
Cause you know when you hop on a horse...
MARCUS PARKS
Pop.
BEN KISSEL
Yep. If you hop on a horse. Also I feel like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, old Dr. Hymen Buster over here.
BEN KISSEL
Yep. That's my name. The thing is I feel like if you're a virgin, for some reason if you kill someone, I don't think you're a virgin anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
You know, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know why.
MARCUS PARKS
If you kill someone before having sex for the first time?
BEN KISSEL
It's just like now you jumped it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I cry for that child.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now it's said that while Joan of Arc the person was very simple, they even described her as childlike personally, she was masterful in battle. But really only when she had cannon to back her up. When she didn't, she lost. But that wasn't really the point of Joan of Arc.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Joan of Arc was a symbol, someone for the French to rally around and the English to fear. She freaked the English out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
She was also out of her fucking mind, someone who truly believed that her free auditory and visual hallucinations were heaven sent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She saw full body apparitions.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She said the people that she talked to-
BEN KISSEL
So she didn't even need meth like the Nazis did. She just fucking had it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They said that she never tired, they said that she was up all night.
BEN KISSEL
Manic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think she was like a teen. You know like you forget how young and strong you can be?
BEN KISSEL
Well yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But she would talk with them. There's some words... She also said she saw god in lights and sounds and she would see things and that she was given a set of things that she was supposed to do by the angel Michael. The archangel Michael arrived to her, she said number one, great hair, smelled great.
BEN KISSEL
John Travolta.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was him time traveling.
MARCUS PARKS
It was Michael, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was like oh Joan, what you got?
BEN KISSEL
Oh he's back! Made in a lab!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Made in a lab. But there's some saying that they think that the angels she spoke to are an allegorical version of actual people she talked to.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And she would posit as she called her angels.
MARCUS PARKS
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they were like guys.
BEN KISSEL
It seems like in any era she would have a compelling story and some followers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. But I mean it also could have been that... It's been posited that she had a form of epilepsy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Because she also supposedly when she had these visions, she saw bright lights, the visions were apparently triggered by bells, certain sounds. And it could just be that she was trying to make sense of a very serious medical problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And she just fucking ran with it harder than anyone in history.
BEN KISSEL
So all of the opposing armies could have just like all rung school bells and killed her?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that would be incredible.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They would have won.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was the Daniel Johnston of medieval history.
BEN KISSEL
RIP.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, the outsider military commander. Yeah. But the problem with symbols like Joan of Arc is that they often outlast their usefulness to the people in charge because symbols are by their very nature unpredictable and hard to control. And as we'll see with Joan of Arc, the end of a symbol can be quite messy indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now according to Joan, she was only 13 when she heard a voice in her father's garden. She said it was about noon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh Joan. Hey Joanie, where you going with old Mr. Kotter?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I don't care what anyone thinks, I love it.
MARCUS PARKS
I love it. It's great, it's fine.
BEN KISSEL
It's fine. Very supportive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course. The voice she said came from the direction of the church and was actually quite disturbing every time it happened.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh Joan! Oh Joan, it's me!
BEN KISSEL
He's back, baby.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's John Travolta, oh!
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
The voice usually came with a light, she said. And the sound of it was, Henry, ineffably grave and sweet.
BEN KISSEL
What does that mean?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I literally couldn't do ineffably grave and sweet if I wanted to.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I think that's how I view like Andy Dufresne. I feel like it's something like that, because that's my Morgan Freeman is just that word.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, yes, Morgan Freeman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Andy Dufresne, Joan of Arc. Crawl through a river of shit, come out clean on the other side. Like that's all I know. It's not even good.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
No, it's good. It makes sense, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that is ineffably grave and sweet. That's Morgan Freeman. Like say Morgan Freeman in Se7en when he's talking to Gwyneth Paltrow. That's ineffably grave and sweet.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Your husband is-
MARCUS PARKS
You spoil that child as much as you possibly can.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah and her head ends up in a fucking box.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, spoilers!
BEN KISSEL
Wow, I never saw that. I didn't see that part.
MARCUS PARKS
Soon Joan not only heard the voice-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the only part I've seen.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just watch it over and over and over and over again.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
What's in the box? What's in the box?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's in the box?
BEN KISSEL
And then he opens it up and it's just one of her-
MARCUS PARKS
Testicles.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, okay. We're gonna let that be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's improv.
BEN KISSEL
2023, you never know what's in the box.
MARCUS PARKS
Well soon Joan not only heard the voice but saw who it belonged to. In her hallucination, Joan was visited by St. Michael the Archangel, protective warrior saint of France and the protector of the Valois line of the French royal family.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he looked her up and down and he first thing he said is he said-
MARCUS PARKS
He said show, look at-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Show me the titty.
BEN KISSEL
Show me the titty. Very good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh Andy, show me the titty.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's good. Morgan Freeman, are you here with us?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did the laugh.
BEN KISSEL
Amazing, the laugh.
MARCUS PARKS
Now when St. Michael appeared before Joan, he told her that if she was a good child, god would help her. But only if she sought the help of the king of France first. She ignored the suggestion for years but eventually St. Michael was joined by visions of two more saints. The first was St. Margaret of Antioch, Margaret the Virgin, while the second was St. Catherine of Alexandria.
BEN KISSEL
Not a virgin?
MARCUS PARKS
No, just St. Catherine.
BEN KISSEL
Total slut.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
St. Catherine Big Hole.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
MARCUS PARKS
Now if Michael was a saint representing French patriotism, then the two women represented a moral strength and in the case of Margaret, an almost militant virginity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes because Joan of Arc was... It was interesting. She said she was very, very protective of her virginity.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And she was constantly afraid that someone would say something as coarse as 'show me the titty'.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because she was afraid constantly that... She didn't like to be in private with men. She was afraid of them.
MARCUS PARKS
But she was in private with men a number of times which we'll get to here in a second.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Margaret the Virgin, according to legend... It's part of the story!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know, I know.
BEN KISSEL
It's part of the story.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm not being creepy, it's part of the story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No I know, I know. It's fucking 800 years old.
MARCUS PARKS
Margaret the Virgin, according to legend, had consecrated her virginity to god. That plan was disrupted however when a Roman governor proposed marriage and demanded that she renounce Christianity. She declined and was tortured, which is when the miracles that earned Margaret her sainthood occurred. The most impressive miracle by far was when Satan appeared in the shape of a dragon and swallowed her up.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, that's big.
BEN KISSEL
That's big.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But she had a cross with her and she started tickling Satan's innards.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, so a Looney Tunes type defense.
BEN KISSEL
It works, it works.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And so Satan got sick and threw her back up. She was alive.
BEN KISSEL
That's why she's a fucking saint?
MARCUS PARKS
That's one of the reasons why.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm also going to just say straight up that just means that honestly Satan wasn't strong enough in that time period. Because you don't think that's the first time someone's tried to tickle his stomach from the inside?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you're wriggling around in there.
BEN KISSEL
No, I think actually tickling still works.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's a torture indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, ask my father.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tickling still works.
BEN KISSEL
It's just so we can make sure he has feeling still.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, ask your father. You're saying that you tickle your father or that your father tickled you as punishment as a little boy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ask my father.
BEN KISSEL
We shall.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing is that this woman, after she was vomited back up by Satan, the Roman governor decapitated her, thus ensuring her martyrdom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly things just used to be easier.
BEN KISSEL
Wait.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. A lot of saints got decapitated. A lot.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, I know. She didn't not get decapitated. So I don't know why she's a saint is all I'm saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Most of the time to be a saint, it seems to be a long running theme is getting tortured to death.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Getting tortured to death, getting fed to lions, getting your head cut off. But she also remember, she consecrated her virginity to god.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And so she protected her virginity, she did not renounce Christianity, miracles occurred, and then she was killed. Boom, that's a saint right there. That's how saints work.
BEN KISSEL
I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no. Absolutely not. I fold very, very fast.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause god was the only person that could say to her show me the titty.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now these saints supposedly visited Joan of Arc at least once a week for five years, telling her over and over again to seek the king of France, seek the king of France. And she neglected to tell anyone what she was seeing until the taking of Orléans.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now we also only know this from her trial.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't know any of this information about her because she really did kind of pop out of nowhere according to a bunch of people.
MARCUS PARKS
She did. She finally gave in to the voices' commands and traveled to court to report on the Day of the Herrings where she met with Charles VII's military commander. Acting on the advice of the voices, Joan dressed in men's clothing in order to get her foot in the door, then ingratiated herself with two of the commander's men. And as it just so happened, when Joan of Arc arrived on the court scene in 1429, Gilles de Rais was also there.
BEN KISSEL
She ladybugged it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But opposite. Because Ladybugs, that was a boy becoming-
BEN KISSEL
Well yes, he was pretending-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, becoming a girl. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
There's another one...
MARCUS PARKS
It was the one where the girl puts the sock and then she rips off her shirt at the end.
BEN KISSEL
It's called Irish Kiss or something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's called...
MARCUS PARKS
One Of The Boys?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's called 2 Boys 1 Cup.
BEN KISSEL
No, you don't wanna see that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanna say it's girls and boys in the locker room, it's something about smoking in the boys room.
MARCUS PARKS
Smoking in the girls room, smoking in the panties.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Show me the titty.
BEN KISSEL
Show me the titty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Please, Andy Dufresne.
MARCUS PARKS
It's called smoking in the panties, please. DO you wanna look it up, Ben?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's looking it up.
BEN KISSEL
I'm literally searching... I don't know how to google. So this is girl dresses as the boy to play football. She's The Man.
MARCUS PARKS
She's The Man, that's what it was. Was it?
BEN KISSEL
No, I'm talking about an 80s one.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, and 80s one.
BEN KISSEL
Where the chick was on the cover.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We've just come to a grinding halt.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The audience is screaming right now.
BEN KISSEL
Remember she's on the cover and she has a football?
MARCUS PARKS
One Of The Boys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We know what it is.
BEN KISSEL
Is it One Of The Boys?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It doesn't matter, I just remember the woman's breasts in it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, so do I. It's the only scene from the entire movie. It was like in a cave or something?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It doesn't matter.
MARCUS PARKS
Wasn't she in a cave and it was raining?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't remember!
BEN KISSEL
No, One Of The Boys is a Katy Perry album. No, that's wrong. I forget. I know the cover, I bought it and I used it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In your gilded chambers.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now concerning Gilles de Rais and Joan of Arc-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Some of Gilles de Rais' biographers, the ones with more romantic points of view, they claim that Gilles was immediately smitten with Joan of Arc and thereafter fell in love at first sight.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
They go on and on to say that Gilles was suffering from erotic frustration because of his wife's frigidity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, cause that's what they always say about medieval times and marriages too because women are even like, they're definitely allowed to be frigid.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. And they also said that Joan of Arc became a symbol of spiritual and physical longing and her purity kept her out of reach from Gilles de Rais. But to the contrary, it was documented by several authors that Joan gave off no sexual aura whatsoever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Literally didn't. Did not want it.
MARCUS PARKS
No sexual aura.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, she's a warrior. I believe that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And Gilles de Rais was of course a horrific child murderer who opened the body cavities of his victims so he could look at their internal organs while having sex with the cadavers while they were still warm because Gilles disliked a cold corpse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're all different.
BEN KISSEL
Well you did just shoehorn that in there. Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I drink iced coffee all through the winter.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. So that was something he used to do. We'll get into that I'm sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll get to the reason why I think there's also pushback about these claims because I think a lot of people don't do the horrible reading that we do and know that serial killers have done the things that he said that he did.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because a lot of people be like no one would ever do that. But now we know for a fact that they do do that and then imagine what you would do if you had total complete control and society wouldn't fuck with you for doing it.
MARCUS PARKS
At all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well and if you had the help of say 4-5 people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like if you had a team, a full team of people and people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Your cousins and your brothers that are involved.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right, like an A-Team.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And people that are also covering up for you just like in A-Team. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, that reboot, that dark reboot of A-Team was rough.
BEN KISSEL
Oh it was weird. Yeah, it was weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mr. T, I didn't know T stood for that.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as author Leonard Wolf puts it, it was probably more likely that Joan and Gilles were simply two strange people who bonded through continued battlefield experiences and a shared love of the theatrical.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just cause she was fucking batshit whatever she was.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he was.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is another crazy fucking maniac, like a supervillain.
MARCUS PARKS
But it's even possible that Joan saw Gilles as a sort of project because while he was a psychopath, he was also a skilled and capable commander. And so under Joan's influence, Gilles de Rais had a brief period of honor during this phase of the Hundred Years' War, when Joan was hanging around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You mean virgin eye for the rapist guy. I didn't write that. I didn't even do that.
BEN KISSEL
It's a hot new show.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's fresh.
MARCUS PARKS
That's fresh.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
That is what you get when you make a podcaster in a lab.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. In a lab. And I just want to thank Men's Health for hiring real writers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Does it mean that my memories are fake? Have I always been... Did you just meet me mysteriously when I was 26 years old?
BEN KISSEL
We programmed you this way but we don't want you to find out this way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because you know how big of a budget me and Ben had back in 2009, 2010.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You guys are secret millionaires!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This whole time. That's why we were recording out of that fucking dingy dank basement.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wait a second, I'm having another memory. Was I in a houseboat? Whoa, was I manchurianed?
BEN KISSEL
You are manchurianed, my friend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thanks for the wife, CIA.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as Joan's appearance went, all accounts had her showing up at court with a short bowl haircut, shaved at the base of the neck and cut above the ears, as was the style for men at the time.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And Emo Phillips in the mid 80s.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, very much so. He's one of my favorites. She was also said to be pretty but not overly so and she was average height for the time, about 5'2". They were very short back then.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're French.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But the one thing that almost everyone commented upon and I only mentioned this in the interest of historical context-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Everyone from the dukes who dressed with her before battle to the squire who helped her take a dump said that Joan of Arc had in their words "beautiful breasts."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Show me the titty.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. I thought you were going to see something more negative about a stench that could come from her nether regions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's disgusting.
MARCUS PARKS
That is absolutely disgusting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
They all said her breasts were beautiful. But they spoke about it-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What was it? Suited for matronly... Like that's the term that they used for big bosomed was that it was good for babies.
MARCUS PARKS
The duke did say beautiful breasts, in French of course.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Well good for them.
MARCUS PARKS
But I bring that up for a reason.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Some historical misunderstandings of Joan of Arc posit that Joan poses a man throughout her military career. She did not. Yeah. She only dressed as a man until she gained access to dauphin Charles VII, the ruler of France.
BEN KISSEL
So she was like ooh, I have a secret for you. And then she was like look at these knockers!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Would these tits be on a dude?
BEN KISSEL
No way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know, I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But isn't this the story where she showed up and the way they wanted to prove whether or not she actually had magical powers, because they heard about this chick and she had the power of prophecy.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They wanted it to be real.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they needed somebody to inspire everybody.
BEN KISSEL
She had the fake nipple like the psychic in Mallrats?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I mean I get what you're saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I get where you're coming from.
BEN KISSEL
Psychic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, like this.
BEN KISSEL
She had that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Show me the titty.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But she showed up in court and the king did the thing where... Because she didn't know what he looked like, ostensibly.
MARCUS PARKS
No one really knew what the king looked like, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And so he hid amongst his courtiers and they said that if she could figure out who the king was, she's the real deal.
BEN KISSEL
It's the short guy screaming at everyone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Basically. But she figured that out. I do feel there was almost a fear of that, like they didn't know that it was very obvious who the king. But then she was like and that's the king.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they were all like no fucking shit!
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they all flipped out and immediately he princessed her which was not taken lightly at the time.
BEN KISSEL
It's still not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It very much impressed him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And I might be attributing things to her that may not be there but it seemed like she was also a good judge of human nature. It seemed like she could read a room and say well that guy is being revered above all else.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
A king is gonna have an aura about him.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She is a capital G Great person in history's ability to understand her place in time and what it would serve.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's why it's so compelling to compare her with Gilles de Rais because it's the two very opposite sides.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It really was a true believer and a villain but they both kind of understood where they were in history and how they could affect it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, maybe she could just read people and people looked at that guy and she was like probably that guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then they kind of stick out because they have this sort of understanding. Because you'll see just her basic humanity changed the entire army.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well at her first meeting with Charles VII, after she revealed her gender, they spoke for two hours. And it's said that Charles wept after hearing what she had to say. Apparently she had offered a private prayer regarding the legitimacy of his crown and she was apparently quite convincing. And France, as Henry said, it was certainly at a low point here. And Joan of Arc seemed to be, if you're looking at it cynically, somewhat of a publicity stunt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Sort of a last ditch effort to turn this whole Hundred Years' War thing around. Of course she later proved herself to be valuable in battle as well but Joan of Arc as a symbol was far more important.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was way more important.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Of course for those listening, the Hundred Years' War was actually fought in three different increments and lasted a total of 116.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
How did you know that?
BEN KISSEL
I actually just... Man, the thing was with Craon, he was just scuffing up the floor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I guess. Not bad.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that crazy?
MARCUS PARKS
Crazy, yeah. Now for some reason-
BEN KISSEL
Now they got this guy Macron, he leaves crumbs everywhere.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a cookie joke!
BEN KISSEL
Wait a second, I'm made in the lab.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Your memories are fake.
BEN KISSEL
Oh shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the dauphin decided that if Joan of Arc was a virgin, then she was sent from god and he'd consider her request to give her an army to retake Orléans. But if she wasn't, then she was sent by the devil and she would probably be killed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it was a big gamble.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
So Charles VII had all manner of church officials and noblewomen crawl all over Joan and they afterward concluded that only goodness, humility, virginity, devotion, honesty, and simplicity existed within her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now you know how they tell if you're a virgin?
BEN KISSEL
How? Literally how?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What they do is they, this is the ancient, you can do this at home if you want to tell.
BEN KISSEL
This is gonna be a joke, isn't it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. No, no, this is real.
BEN KISSEL
This is gonna be a joke made in a lab.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, absolutely not. No, no, no. Is that you get the woman, you get her on her back, you get the legs up there. And the key is you take a little seed, you throw it at the pussy. If it bounces off, she's a virgin.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But if it's...
BEN KISSEL
If the seed sticks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a lady who's been husbanded.
BEN KISSEL
She's been plucked and not by you.
MARCUS PARKS
So you're saying if the vagina eats the seed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how you know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, like Little Shop of Horrors, like it's Audrey II.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was Nat and I's first date.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh really?
BEN KISSEL
That is fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
That is fantastic.
BEN KISSEL
But after all the probing and prodding, is he still even a virgin?
MARCUS PARKS
Well I don't...
BEN KISSEL
Because they get the spatula, whatever the fuck it's called.
MARCUS PARKS
A speculum.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually don't know how they checked if she was a virgin.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do think that they literally just stuck a finger up her pussy.
MARCUS PARKS
They might have.
BEN KISSEL
But then she's not...
MARCUS PARKS
Well yeah, she is a virgin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well yeah, no, you feel it.
MARCUS PARKS
You're not a virgin when you get fingered for the first time, you lose your virginity when you have sex for the first time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Depending on how vigorous it is.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Depending.
BEN KISSEL
I didn't go to Notre Dame, buddy.
BEN KISSEL
I actually think that's up for debate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very much in the weeds.
BEN KISSEL
We can move on. It's just a weird thing for them... But people are weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's because again it's about is what she's saying real?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because a part of it was a virgin would save France.
BEN KISSEL
Has to do it. Right, got it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But the king still asked for a sign from god. But Joan, in a shrewd tactic, said that she would only produce that sign at Orléans and nowhere else because that was what the voice commanding her said. You got to do it in Orléans. And so the king figured in for a penny, in for a pound, if you'll excuse the English expression. And he gave Joan of Arc control of an army and sent her to Orléans.
BEN KISSEL
Marcus, when you write sentences like that, did you think that anyone wasn't going to like it? Because it's like you always-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I can see the smile on his face like-
BEN KISSEL
In for a penny, in for a pound. If they excuse me!
MARCUS PARKS
The reason why I would ask for perhaps pardon is because I'm speaking of the French here and at this time the French were enemies of the English.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is a Dan Carlin joke.
BEN KISSEL
It's the worst.
MARCUS PARKS
So I would imagine that perhaps the French might take umbrage to me using an English expression to describe-
BEN KISSEL
Not made in a lab. Not made in a lab.
MARCUS PARKS
No, 100% Texan homegrown, my friend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Made the old fashioned way by bullying.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Well so Joan of Arc was given control of an army and was sent to Orléans. In tow of course was Gilles de Rais, who was placed in charge of another company supporting Joan. Now when it came to the theatrical, Joan had a special suit of white armor made for her ride to Orléans.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man, like Eddie Murphy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. She was I think quickly figuring out that the more she played up her image, the more likely it would be that people would follow her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also now we're turning the tide, right? They're trying to inspire people, we're trying to say god's on our side. Now we got god's number one agent here helping us.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Super cool.
MARCUS PARKS
She also had banners made featuring Christ flanked by two angels, which was a design that she said was again given to her by her angels.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, they had a fucking graphic designer, they had a PR guy.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a whole thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. She also carried a sword with five crosses engraved on the blade which she'd found rusting in the back of a church after the voices told her where to find it.
BEN KISSEL
That's awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It really is true. There's a lot of accounts of people saying the thing about her is that she was spooky, is that she would say shit like that and she'd like go off and be like there's a sword in the barn that belongs to me. And they're like okay, Joan.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then she'd like go and find it like I told you, god directed me to it. And you're like well, I hope we're having lamb consommé. Right? What are we having here?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm sure some of it was of course propaganda.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah of course.
MARCUS PARKS
But the thing is that even the English would say it was supernatural to see her on a battlefield.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People stuck whatever it was, they stuck the kayfabe. And they all knew they all had to like present her as such.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that's the thing is that the people loved her for it. And of course because the people loved her for it, then the king loved her for it. And military commanders even started following it. At first they grumbled of course because this fucking 16 year old who just shows up-
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
They're putting her in charge of armies. But then once she started winning battles they were like oh, huh, interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People are fighting harder for her. It's the Dan Carlin X factor he talks about all the time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, she was good for morale. And some have of course tried reducing Joan of Arc to a simple mascot even though her skills in battle are well documented. But I believe that her true contribution to the French military was that she instituted radical changes in how medieval armies behaved, even if some of those rules were a result of her forcing rigid Christian morality on others. For example, Joan told all of the sex workers traveling with the army that they had to get married to someone within a day of her decree or leave.
BEN KISSEL
Well you know, just get married to someone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, she was shutting that pussy down.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. She also forbade all swearing and blasphemy and required all the soldiers to go to confession.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, she made it all nice.
BEN KISSEL
Well it might be good to keep the focus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was!
MARCUS PARKS
But the most important change she made was when she forbade her soldiers from pillaging, raping, and murdering the peasant populace.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was definitely a hard way to try to get them all to change, they were really used to it.
MARCUS PARKS
It was a tall order because not only were they used to it, as Henry said, but they derived a lot of their pay from pillaging the peasant population. But Joan came up with a radical solution for this problem. She proposed that Charles VII pay them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gig economy.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, gig economy.
MARCUS PARKS
Pay them a living wage.
BEN KISSEL
Pay the soldiers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Pay the soldiers a living wage and then they wouldn't be tempted to act like animals. Now Charles VII had to make massive sacrifices in order to do this. He had to sell off so many jewels that were just sitting there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So many jewels.
BEN KISSEL
So many jewels.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And those jewels were sitting there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they were sitting there and he had to sell them. And so all of a sudden Charles VII doesn't have all these jewels to look at anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jewels! He used to have those jewels.
BEN KISSEL
To look at.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And now think about it, now they're someplace else.
MARCUS PARKS
Now they're getting paid to a soldier so he won't murder your peasant population. And what's the use of that? You can't see that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You can't show that to your friends and say look at that thing.
BEN KISSEL
Also if they really wanted to pillage the peasant class, it's called taxation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They already were doing it.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Gilles de Rais also contributed to the soldiers' pay, perhaps hoping to gain the approval and acceptance of the person to whom he'd been growing closer to since the ride to Orléans began. This however might have just been Gilles the sociopath going with the flow to ingratiate himself with someone of obvious power and prestige. But as word spread that the French army was actually paying its soldiers, morale spread amongst the countryside because they were no longer terrified of being raped and murdered by the military.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I bet you it eases up dinner time sometimes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Suddenly the people even had a kind of positive attitude towards France.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa! Kind of positive attitude towards France? That's as good as it's gonna get.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As long as they're slightly in the plus category.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Additionally, people who had a problem with the whole raping and pillaging aspect of soldiering, they were now joining the army.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, now they're getting the pussies!
MARCUS PARKS
That meant that their rank and file were no longer made up exclusively of monsters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that was the thing was that Gilles de Rais, as we'll cover, when he showed up, he's a very dangerous human being.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His people were very, very dangerous. They were very fucked up.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Yeah, if they're following him it seems like they might be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And so with a stronger army, higher morale, and Gilles de Rais at her side, Joan of Arc set off for Orléans to free the city from the hated English. Joan of course famously didn't last long after that. And once Joan was out of the picture, the true horrors of Gilles de Rais began. Which is what we'll get to in full on the next episode of Last Podcast on the Left.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hope you like neck fucking!
BEN KISSEL
I don't like it. I mean Marcus alluded to what he liked to do with the cadavers there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh mama.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Next week is gonna be a full on Elizabeth Bathory style cavalcade of horrors that were inside his many, many castles. But don't worry, eventually we'll get to theater!
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
And black magic.
BEN KISSEL
Cavalcade of horrors, that could be a good name for our next tour.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's cool.
BEN KISSEL
Again, we're bringing sexy flax. Those are my two options so far.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's in the workshop right now. We're workshopping and workshopping.
BEN KISSEL
It's in the lab!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's in the lab. Bringing sexy flax.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If I go in that fucking lab and there's a second me growing to replace me, I'm gonna be very, very pissed.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this one we gotta make sure doesn't have that high blood pressure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I fixed it!
BEN KISSEL
That was our mistake.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
We baked him in sugar water.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
BEN KISSEL
Thank you all so much for listening. April 8th, you can see Henry and I, we're gonna have a good time doing a little live.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Getitmade.la/disasterman. And check out Side Stories live.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
As Marcus said, check out our stream. It's every Tuesday now. And so go to our Patreon, I think you guys will like it.
MARCUS PARKS
And we're gonna be at WonderCon next weekend.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That would be March 24th and 25th, I believe.
BEN KISSEL
I think so. Sounds right to me.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And yeah, we're gonna be signing books on Friday for Z2 Comics and we're gonna be doing a panel and signing on Saturday. So come on out if you're in the Anaheim area, if you're in the Los Angeles county area, come on out. If you're in San Diego, come on out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come on out, man. We're gonna have a good time.
MARCUS PARKS
If you're in Bakersfield, drive on down. If you're in Needles, drive on over.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you're in Tijuana, drive on north.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. And if you're in Needles, I don't know what happens. Needles is the scariest sounding town name I've ever heard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Needles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly what's crazy is the spoon museum there is fantastic.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Needle and the spoon, the damage done. Thank you all so much for listening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I couldn't figure out what was the opposite of needle. I'm tired.
MARCUS PARKS
But Ben did say the needle and the spoon, that's what we're talking about.
BEN KISSEL
That's heroin.
MARCUS PARKS
That's what Ben was saying, needle and the spoon.
BEN KISSEL
That's Neil Young.
MARCUS PARKS
So yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
BEN KISSEL
It does kinda work. In a lab.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What can you do? Science made me. God hates me for it.
BEN KISSEL
Hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan!
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you to the group that made me. And I want to say thank you to the um the Weapon X program that has made me because again, we wouldn't be here without me.
MARCUS PARKS
We wouldn't be. In Canada? That's where they made Wolverine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm Canadian?
BEN KISSEL
No!