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Bluebeard: Brave Warrior, Brutal Psychopath
Joan of Arc's close companion on the battlefield, one of the wealthiest and most respected men in France, became a notorious serial killer, nicknamed Bluebeard, who performed bizarre sexual rituals, brutal mutilations and murders on hundreds of children. How could this happen to Baron Gilles de Rais, a Marshal of France, a renowned intellectual, a paragon of the high medieval prince, almost Renaissance in his talents an accomplishments? There is no clear explanation. There is only speculation. Yet historic evidence indicates strongly de Rais, a returning soldier, suffered from severe PTSD, which perhaps triggered his latent psychopathy. His extreme depravity, his shocking fall from grace and explosive end add fuel to the precept that the barbarity of war turned this celebrated hero into a monster.
283 pages, Paperback
First published August 26, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 24, 2015
A good account of the life of Gilles de Rais, one of the most diabolical figures in history, mostly because Ogden is a very good and organized writer. Ogden paints some pretty vivid pictures of life in 15th century France especially via literary excursions into the foods they ate and clothes they wore. There is nothing original here though and no newly-discovered information, but it is hard to detract from such a story of human evil and in the end, incredibly divine forgiveness. It is however repetitive in the author's curious insistence that de Rais suffered from PTSD due to the loss of both of his parents at an early age. Even if true, I'm still left unconvinced that that had anything to do whatsoever with his pedophilia, necrophilia, sadism, and homicidal rages that he acted upon for years with the assistance of like-minded twisted sycophants.
Ogden hovers around the knight's fascinating relationship with Joan of Arc and how his "proclivities" for violence and rape seem to have legitimately subsided during his time with her. Frustratingly, she never delves further into it. Instead, she strays from her narrative by providing some opinion as fact by what could be argued as an agenda-driven source; e.g. p149-150:
"Up to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, gay life was accepted in Christian Europe and practiced openly. Homosexual art, poetry, and music flourished. The most popular literature of the day portrayed same-sex lovers, with clerics at the vanguard of the movement."
Wow. Where is the source for this in an otherwise fairly heavily-footnoted book? I must have been reading the wrong books all these years. Not content with the blanket statement, she narrows it down and continues:
"The Cistercian abbot, Saint Aelred, a homilist and spiritual writer, provided the clearest, most detailed writing glorifying homosexual friendship. He described his youth as a time consumed with enjoying other men and being enjoyed by them. In his eulogy on the death of his homosexual partner, Simon, he wrote:
'He was the refuge of my spirit, the sweet solace of my grief, whose heart of love received me when plunged in sadness and grief... What more is there, then, that I can say? Was it not a foretaste of blessedness thus to love and thus to be loved?'"
Hardly proof of anything here (except of libel against Saint Aelred), just the author's words. Without surmising on what Ogden's motivation was for including bits like this, I fail to understand how any of it is relevant.
Three and a half stars, bumped down to three for the reasons above.
Ogden hovers around the knight's fascinating relationship with Joan of Arc and how his "proclivities" for violence and rape seem to have legitimately subsided during his time with her. Frustratingly, she never delves further into it. Instead, she strays from her narrative by providing some opinion as fact by what could be argued as an agenda-driven source; e.g. p149-150:
"Up to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, gay life was accepted in Christian Europe and practiced openly. Homosexual art, poetry, and music flourished. The most popular literature of the day portrayed same-sex lovers, with clerics at the vanguard of the movement."
Wow. Where is the source for this in an otherwise fairly heavily-footnoted book? I must have been reading the wrong books all these years. Not content with the blanket statement, she narrows it down and continues:
"The Cistercian abbot, Saint Aelred, a homilist and spiritual writer, provided the clearest, most detailed writing glorifying homosexual friendship. He described his youth as a time consumed with enjoying other men and being enjoyed by them. In his eulogy on the death of his homosexual partner, Simon, he wrote:
'He was the refuge of my spirit, the sweet solace of my grief, whose heart of love received me when plunged in sadness and grief... What more is there, then, that I can say? Was it not a foretaste of blessedness thus to love and thus to be loved?'"
Hardly proof of anything here (except of libel against Saint Aelred), just the author's words. Without surmising on what Ogden's motivation was for including bits like this, I fail to understand how any of it is relevant.
Three and a half stars, bumped down to three for the reasons above.
April 12, 2016
Vividly but oddly written, more of a chronicle of 15th century French politics and battles until Ogden suddenly goes into excruciatingly graphic details about de Rais' truly disturbing crimes against children. Unsettling and bizarre.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 14, 2020
I had heard a lot about Gilles de Rais and his exploits, but only as brief chapters or less in books about infamous criminals. However, this one actually had lots of details about the man. Interesting background, and nicely detailed. It's amazing how someone could be such a heroic soldier fighting for his country, and then turn into a monstrous fiend when the war was over. Fascinating read, but extremely disturbing.
April 22, 2016
There's something off here, and it's not just Bluebeard and his crimes.
There are two possible scenarios regarding this book: the conspiracy theorist in me actually wonders if it's published for pedophiles. Why is all the information regarding Gilles de Rais' sodomization and murder of hundreds of children contained in one chapter--making it easy to locate without reading the whole book--and so much more graphic and detailed than the rest of the author's research? Additionally, the author should have perceived the message it would convey to repeatedly excuse Bluebeard's crimes by laying the blame for them on his servants, his battle experience. She should have realized that the only times she departs from her research to make presumptions of intent and fact is either to downplay the numbers of his victims, or to take his statements about his motivations from his trial as truth and read further into them about how mentally persecuted he was. Is she an apologist for psychopathic pedophiles, providing them some entertainment?
I realize the second scenario is more likely--that the author took all her college papers on Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years War, and mashed them together with documents she found about Gilles de Rais' lifestyle and trial, and spit out a book without bothering to properly edit it together into a unified whole.
This book's timeline is completely f*cked, both in the macro and micro. Rather than doing the work to repair this, the author attempts to disguise it in the manner in which she groups the subject matter into chapters. However, this is inexpertly and lazily done and only makes the chronology issue more confusing. Structure and chronology are obviously weak points for the author, because even from paragraph to paragraph she consistently hops two steps backwards, requiring the reader to retrace their steps in order to understand the chain of events, even though the writing is at about a high school level in terms of difficulty.
Finally, her theory on PTSD as the cause of Bluebeard's crimes is nothing short of disastrous. If there is a morsel of truth to it, it's not to be discovered in this book's arguments. The author also displays a shocking misunderstanding of psychopathology for someone attempting to build a thesis on it and makes several statements so naively inaccurate that they left me laughing sarcastically and scribbling arguments in the margins.
There are two possible scenarios regarding this book: the conspiracy theorist in me actually wonders if it's published for pedophiles. Why is all the information regarding Gilles de Rais' sodomization and murder of hundreds of children contained in one chapter--making it easy to locate without reading the whole book--and so much more graphic and detailed than the rest of the author's research? Additionally, the author should have perceived the message it would convey to repeatedly excuse Bluebeard's crimes by laying the blame for them on his servants, his battle experience. She should have realized that the only times she departs from her research to make presumptions of intent and fact is either to downplay the numbers of his victims, or to take his statements about his motivations from his trial as truth and read further into them about how mentally persecuted he was. Is she an apologist for psychopathic pedophiles, providing them some entertainment?
I realize the second scenario is more likely--that the author took all her college papers on Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years War, and mashed them together with documents she found about Gilles de Rais' lifestyle and trial, and spit out a book without bothering to properly edit it together into a unified whole.
This book's timeline is completely f*cked, both in the macro and micro. Rather than doing the work to repair this, the author attempts to disguise it in the manner in which she groups the subject matter into chapters. However, this is inexpertly and lazily done and only makes the chronology issue more confusing. Structure and chronology are obviously weak points for the author, because even from paragraph to paragraph she consistently hops two steps backwards, requiring the reader to retrace their steps in order to understand the chain of events, even though the writing is at about a high school level in terms of difficulty.
Finally, her theory on PTSD as the cause of Bluebeard's crimes is nothing short of disastrous. If there is a morsel of truth to it, it's not to be discovered in this book's arguments. The author also displays a shocking misunderstanding of psychopathology for someone attempting to build a thesis on it and makes several statements so naively inaccurate that they left me laughing sarcastically and scribbling arguments in the margins.
January 10, 2015
According to Wikipedia, Bluebeard is a French folktale of a “violent nobleman in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife at avoid the fate of her predecessors.” Valerie Ogden links the Bluebeard story to Baron Gilles de Rais through research and records. This story is her version of the tale. From the early loss of his parents, his cruel grandfather encouraging bad behaviors, fighting along side Joan of Arc, and his fall into madness. Along the way, Valerie Ogden analysis de Rais behaviors with current psychological conditions from bipolar to PTSD to explain his behavior.
I admit that I went into this story thinking it would be an adapted history about Gilles de Rais. This book is more a history of the time period of de Rais. You will learn about other nobles, rules, clergy and such going on. There are also extensive descriptions of feasts, gatherings, and other events. There is a touch of things de Rais does and a couple events he goes through but not to the extent that I was hoping for.
There are also vague references to Gilles de Rais. I understand that this information is coming from badly kept records so there is a lot of room to interpret what happens. But I have to say reading about how de Rais had all these homosexual conquests and torture of children but there is nothing that really gives me the impression that these things really happened or if someone was just trying to ruin his reputation.
I also was hoping for more with Joan of Arc but I was disappointed that there was little information of de Rais and how he fought beside her. I was also left confused with how he could be this cruel child killer but turn saint when around Joan of Arc. Then he goes back to being this serial murderer. I understand how the different events could shape him and bring on this behavior but something about this seems odd to me.
If you are looking for a book with more historical facts around this time period I think this would be a book that you would like. For me, I admit that I didn’t expect what was in the book. That’s not to say it is not a good book.
I received this book in exchange for an honest review.
I admit that I went into this story thinking it would be an adapted history about Gilles de Rais. This book is more a history of the time period of de Rais. You will learn about other nobles, rules, clergy and such going on. There are also extensive descriptions of feasts, gatherings, and other events. There is a touch of things de Rais does and a couple events he goes through but not to the extent that I was hoping for.
There are also vague references to Gilles de Rais. I understand that this information is coming from badly kept records so there is a lot of room to interpret what happens. But I have to say reading about how de Rais had all these homosexual conquests and torture of children but there is nothing that really gives me the impression that these things really happened or if someone was just trying to ruin his reputation.
I also was hoping for more with Joan of Arc but I was disappointed that there was little information of de Rais and how he fought beside her. I was also left confused with how he could be this cruel child killer but turn saint when around Joan of Arc. Then he goes back to being this serial murderer. I understand how the different events could shape him and bring on this behavior but something about this seems odd to me.
If you are looking for a book with more historical facts around this time period I think this would be a book that you would like. For me, I admit that I didn’t expect what was in the book. That’s not to say it is not a good book.
I received this book in exchange for an honest review.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews