Despite it being my longest and oldest special interest, i try not to take 40k to seriously. With that being said, I want to talk about a 40k character in a serious way. It's obnoxiously long.
Saint Sabbat, who is a fairly niche character from Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series. She was born a herder girl, on the world of Hagia, about 5000 years before the series. She descended from the great mountains of her birth, down into the plains, and up again into the stars, following visions of her god, a god whose light was fading in the land of her birth. She would return to her home, 105 years later, her remains transported by 6 of her god’s own angels. She had reclaimed not only her own world, but hundreds. She would live again, millennia later. Men, good, honest, kind men, would kill and die for her. To protect her tomb, her remains, her glory and her honor.
I view her, in a very meaningful way, as a love letter to Joan of Arc. Her story mirrors the life of Joan of Arc in many ways, with a critical difference of course. Joan was, for reasons of politics and misogyny, accused of witchcraft and convicted, but allowed to live if she renounced her visions of god, and began to dress and remain feminine in appearance. Then she was found dressed in mens clothes (afaik its unknown if she did it voluntarily to discourage her guards from raping her, or it was done to her by the guards as an act of final cruelty). Either way, she would die for it. She was burned, holding the image of her own god until she could not hold anything. Her ashes were dumped in a nearby river, as to avoid their veneration. She had followed voices and visions from her god (at least she believed they were, the actual theology doesn’t really matter to me, ill get into that later), to help bring glory to her home, in her eyes save and bring god’s light to her own home. It had gotten her killed, and killed badly. She had said the voice she heard was angry at her for denying its truth, and she wouldn’t again. Maybe it was god, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she saw angels, maybe she had one of a long list of mental issues. But here’s what i’ll say. I hear voices, I imagine light and safety and comfort and purpose and glory, see it in everything, whether it’s god or my own imagination or what. I know what it is like to do something to save your own skin, and have a voice in your own head you trust deeply become furious with you because it is wrong. I know what it’s like to be a scared teenage girl, just trying to do right by yourself and by god, and not knowing how to.
Joan deserved a good burial, to be carried to her grave by ones who loved her, to have her tomb become a venerated holy site, to have her own order of priests, or, at the very least, just to know, in the end, that it would all be okay. To know she was loved, to know, she would go home.
I see so much of myself in both of them, in the real woman and the character. So much of myself that is scared, and hurts, and doesn’t know how to keep herself safe. When I look at Joan, I see the danger, but I also see the hope. That maybe, half a millennia later, someone would see what i have done, how I have hurt, and gentle it. Make it kinder, make it feel more like there's some chance that it’ll all work out.
I hope, at least, I get to go home in the end.