Celebrated today as Europe’s first feminist literary icon, Christine de Pizan never set out to be a trailblazer. She simply needed to pay her rent after her husband died in a plague outbreak. This deep dive explores how a 14th-century widow leveraged her intellect to survive a treacherous French royal court.

Raised in privilege as the daughter of King Charles V’s royal astrologer, Christine was widowed at 25 with three children and a mother to support. Trapped in years of lawsuits under a legal system built by men for men, she monetized the one asset the courts could not freeze: her education.

• How she ran a one-woman medieval media startup, tailoring editions to rival dukes
• Her public attack on The Romance of the Rose and her use of antiphrasis
• The Book of the City of Ladies and her empathetic rereading of Medusa
• Her pivot to writing military strategy manuals during the French civil war
• Her final triumphant poem celebrating the rise of Joan of Arc