From 1434 to 1440, Joan’s Brothers Passed An Imposter Off As Their Sister, Claiming She’d Escaped Execution
Claude des Armoises, one of several women who pretended to be Joan in the years after her death, resembled the well-known heretic and had allegedly taken part in military operations while costumed as a man. She concocted a plan with two of Joan's brothers, Jean and Pierre, in which Claude appeared to the inhabitants of Orléans, professing to have escaped her captors and wed a knight while residing in obscurity. Before Claude ultimately told Charles VII, whose ascent Joan had arranged in 1429, of the trio's ruse, they received extravagant presents and attended numerous celebratory gatherings.
Despite being complicit in the fraud, Jean and Pierre were instrumental in getting Pope Callixtus III to grant Joan's request for a new trial. By the 1450s, it seems likely that they had given up on the lie that she would survive.
