Squabble Over Joan of Arc's Ring Ends—Thanks to Queen?

French theme park says Elizabeth stepped in so relic could stay in France
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 28, 2016 8:43 AM CDT
Squabble Over Joan of Arc's Ring Ends—Thanks to Queen?
A portrait of Joan of Arc.   (AP Photo, File)

The Anglo-Franco bickering over a ring believed to have belonged to French national hero Joan of Arc is perhaps done for the moment: As the Guardian reports, has gone on display at a historical them park in France almost 600 years after she was burned at the stake, and it may have been the current British monarch who put the controversy to bed. The ring, which spent those 600 years in Britain, was bought by a group of French donors for $425,000 earlier this year; it returned home to France, only to have Britain demand its return over a permit issue. The president of Puy du Fou, the theme park, tells the Guardian there was never any question of returning the artifact.

"The request made us laugh," says Nicolas de Villiers. “We wrote to the Queen asking her if she could help sort things out quickly. Clearly Buckingham Palace spoke in the right person’s ear because we then heard we could keep the ring. It’s a symbol, a relic, that has been held prisoner in England for 600 years." Puy du Fou hopes to build a chapel to house the ring, where the public will be able to view it for free. "It will never be a business for us," de Villiers says. "That would be a very serious betrayal of the promise we made to donors. This is a relic and to make money from it is out of the question." (More Joan of Arc stories.)

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