How to Create a Joan of Arc AI Persona for History Education

Imagine your students engaging in a genuine conversation with Joan of Arc, asking her about the Hundred Years’ War, her visions, or what it felt like to lead an army at seventeen. Creating an AI persona of historical figures like Joan of Arc transforms history education from passive reading to active dialogue, making the past come alive in ways traditional textbooks never could.

Building an AI persona might sound like a task requiring coding expertise or complex programming knowledge, but modern no-code platforms have revolutionized this process. Whether you’re an educator looking to enhance your history curriculum, a museum professional creating interactive exhibits, or a content creator developing engaging historical content, you can now build sophisticated AI personas in minutes rather than months.

This guide will walk you through creating an authentic Joan of Arc AI persona that captures her voice, knowledge, and historical context. You’ll learn how to develop a historically accurate character that can engage in meaningful conversations about 15th-century France, medieval warfare, religious experiences, and the remarkable life of the Maid of Orléans. By the end, you’ll have the skills to create not just Joan of Arc, but any historical figure you want to bring to life through AI.

Understanding Joan of Arc: The Historical Foundation

Before building your AI persona, you need a solid understanding of Joan of Arc’s life, context, and character. Born around 1412 in Domrémy, France, Joan claimed to receive visions from saints instructing her to support Charles VII and help liberate France from English domination during the Hundred Years’ War. At age seventeen, she convinced Charles VII to allow her to lead French forces, and she played a pivotal role in lifting the siege of Orléans in 1429.

Joan’s story encompasses triumph and tragedy. After her military successes, she was captured by Burgundian forces, sold to the English, and tried for heresy. At nineteen, she was burned at the stake in Rouen. Twenty-five years later, a papal court declared her innocent, and in 1920, she was canonized as a saint. This complex narrative provides rich material for an AI persona that can discuss faith, courage, warfare, politics, and gender roles in medieval society.

Your AI persona should reflect the historical Joan: deeply religious, courageous yet humble, passionate about her mission, and shaped by her peasant upbringing. Understanding these nuances will help you create a persona that feels authentic rather than a superficial caricature of a historical figure.

Why Create an AI Persona for Historical Figures

Historical AI personas serve multiple educational and engagement purposes that traditional teaching methods struggle to achieve. When students can ask questions directly to a historical figure and receive contextually appropriate responses, history transforms from memorization to exploration. This interactive approach encourages critical thinking as students formulate questions, evaluate responses, and engage with historical perspectives.

For educators, AI personas provide scalable one-on-one interaction that would be impossible in traditional classroom settings. While you’re working with one group, students can independently interview Joan of Arc about her trial, her visions, or daily life in medieval France. The AI persona serves as a tireless teaching assistant that never loses patience and can engage with dozens of students simultaneously.

Beyond education, historical AI personas enhance museum exhibits, historical websites, tourism applications, and content creation. Visitors can have personalized conversations with historical figures, making their experience memorable and unique. Content creators can use these personas to generate authentic dialogue for videos, podcasts, or written content. The applications are limited only by your imagination.

Planning Your Joan of Arc AI Persona

Successful AI personas begin with thorough planning. Before touching any platform or tool, outline what you want your Joan of Arc persona to accomplish, who will interact with it, and what knowledge it needs to possess. This planning phase determines the depth and quality of your final creation.

Start by defining your audience and purpose. Are you creating this for high school students studying the Hundred Years’ War, elementary students learning about courage and conviction, or adult learners interested in medieval history? Your audience shapes the complexity of language, the depth of historical detail, and the topics your persona should be prepared to discuss.

Next, establish the temporal perspective of your persona. Will Joan speak from before her military campaigns, during her triumph at Orléans, or after her trial? Each period offers different insights and emotional tones. Many creators find the period during her military successes most engaging, as it captures Joan at her most confident and provides a wide range of discussion topics from warfare to court politics.

Key Planning Elements

Consider these essential elements during your planning phase:

• Historical accuracy scope: Decide how strictly you’ll adhere to documented history versus filling gaps with reasonable interpretation
• Language complexity: Determine whether to use period-appropriate language or modern English for accessibility
• Interaction boundaries: Establish what topics are appropriate and how the persona handles questions beyond its knowledge
• Educational goals: Identify specific learning objectives your persona should support
• Emotional authenticity: Plan how to convey Joan’s passion, faith, and conviction without becoming preachy

Building Your Joan of Arc Persona with Estha

With your planning complete, you’re ready to build your AI persona using Estha’s no-code platform. Unlike traditional AI development that requires programming knowledge or complex prompt engineering, Estha’s intuitive drag-drop-link interface makes the process accessible to anyone, regardless of technical background.

1. Access the Estha Studio – Navigate to the Estha Studio and create a new AI application. Select the chatbot or expert advisor template as your starting point, as these formats work best for conversational historical personas. The platform guides you through each step with clear instructions, so you won’t feel lost even if this is your first AI creation.

2. Configure Basic Settings – Give your persona a name (such as “Joan of Arc” or “The Maid of Orléans”) and write a brief description of what users can expect. This description helps set appropriate expectations, such as “Speak with Joan of Arc during her military campaign of 1429. Ask about her visions, the siege of Orléans, medieval warfare, and life in 15th-century France.”

3. Set the Character Foundation – Use Estha’s character configuration module to establish the core identity. Input basic biographical information including birth year, birthplace, family background, and the current time period from which Joan is speaking. This foundation ensures consistency in how your persona references its life and circumstances.

4. Design the Conversation Flow – Estha’s visual interface allows you to map out conversation paths. Create entry points for common question categories such as personal background, military experiences, religious visions, and historical events. The drag-and-drop system makes it easy to connect related topics and create a natural conversation flow that mirrors how Joan might actually discuss her life.

5. Customize the Interface – Choose visual elements that reflect the historical period, such as medieval-inspired colors or imagery related to Joan of Arc. While aesthetics don’t affect functionality, they enhance user immersion and signal the historical nature of the interaction. Estha provides customization options that require no design experience.

Defining Personality Traits and Speaking Style

The personality and speaking style of your AI persona determine whether users experience a wooden, robotic interaction or a compelling conversation with a living historical figure. Joan of Arc possessed distinctive character traits that should permeate every response your persona generates.

Joan was profoundly religious, with her faith forming the foundation of her identity and mission. This should manifest in how your persona frames experiences, attributes successes to divine will, and references prayer and saints naturally in conversation. However, balance is crucial. The persona should convey genuine faith without becoming preachy or alienating users of different beliefs.

Despite her extraordinary accomplishments, historical accounts describe Joan as humble about her role, seeing herself as an instrument of God rather than a hero. Your persona should deflect excessive praise while acknowledging the importance of her mission. When users ask about her bravery or achievements, responses might redirect to the righteousness of the cause or the support of her soldiers rather than personal glory.

Speech Pattern Characteristics

Develop a consistent voice for your Joan of Arc persona by incorporating these elements:

• Directness: Joan was known for plain speaking despite her peasant background; avoid overly flowery language
• Conviction: Responses should reflect certainty about her divine mission while remaining humble about herself
• Medieval context: Reference period-appropriate concepts like honor, divine right, and feudal relationships
• Emotional authenticity: Show appropriate emotion when discussing her visions, victories, or threats to France
• Educational tone: Explain historical context naturally when discussing events unfamiliar to modern audiences

Creating an Authentic Knowledge Base

Your AI persona’s knowledge base determines the breadth and depth of conversations it can sustain. A well-constructed knowledge base allows your Joan of Arc persona to answer questions about her personal experiences, the broader historical context, medieval life, and the political landscape of 15th-century France.

Start with primary source material. Joan’s trial transcripts provide invaluable insight into her own words, beliefs, and how she described her experiences. These documents reveal her voice, her explanations of her visions, and her understanding of her mission. Secondary sources from reputable historians add context and help you understand events Joan participated in but might not have fully grasped, such as the broader political maneuvering around her military campaigns.

Organize knowledge into categories that match how users might approach conversations. Personal biography covers Joan’s childhood, family, and early life. Military experiences include specific battles, siege tactics, her role as a military leader, and relationships with soldiers and commanders. Religious experiences encompass her visions, the voices of saints she heard, and how these experiences guided her actions. Political context covers the Hundred Years’ War, the succession crisis, and relations between France, England, and Burgundy.

Knowledge Base Components

Structure your persona’s knowledge around these essential areas:

• Biographical facts: Birth, family, childhood in Domrémy, education, and early life experiences
• Religious visions: First experiences with saints’ voices, specific messages received, and how these shaped her mission
• Military campaign: Journey to Chinon, convincing the Dauphin, battles fought, strategies employed, and relationship with soldiers
• Medieval daily life: Food, clothing, social customs, gender roles, and peasant versus noble life
• Historical events: Hundred Years’ War progression, key figures of the period, and political alliances
• Period-appropriate limitations: What Joan wouldn’t know about (future events, modern concepts, information beyond her station)

Within Estha’s platform, you can input this knowledge through the content management system without writing code. The system organizes information so your persona can draw upon it naturally during conversations, creating responses that feel spontaneous rather than scripted.

Testing and Refining Your AI Persona

Creating your initial persona is just the beginning. Testing and refinement transform a functional AI into an engaging, authentic historical character. Approach testing systematically by developing a range of questions that represent different user types and interaction styles.

Begin with factual questions about well-documented events. Ask your persona about the siege of Orléans, her meeting with Charles VII, or her capture at Compiègne. Evaluate whether responses are historically accurate, appropriately detailed, and consistent with Joan’s perspective. If answers feel generic or contain anachronisms, revise your knowledge base and personality settings.

Next, test with interpretive questions that require the persona to express opinions or emotions. Ask how Joan felt leading men into battle, what she thinks about those who doubt her visions, or how she views her relationship with the French nobility. These questions reveal whether your persona has a consistent voice and appropriate emotional depth. Responses should reflect Joan’s character while remaining engaging for modern users.

Challenge your persona with questions it shouldn’t be able to answer. Ask about events after 1431, modern historical interpretations, or topics beyond a 15th-century peasant’s knowledge. A well-designed persona acknowledges these limitations gracefully, perhaps saying something like, “I cannot speak to matters beyond my time and understanding,” rather than inventing answers or breaking character.

Refinement Strategies

Improve your persona based on testing results:

• Adjust personality settings if responses feel too modern or inconsistent with historical character
• Expand knowledge base areas where the persona struggles to provide adequate answers
• Refine conversation flows to handle unexpected question types more gracefully
• Add contextual explanations for medieval concepts that modern users might misunderstand
• Balance historical authenticity with accessibility for your target audience

Educational Applications and Use Cases

A well-crafted Joan of Arc AI persona serves diverse educational purposes across multiple settings and age groups. In traditional classroom environments, teachers can assign students to interview Joan as homework, encouraging them to research and formulate thoughtful questions. During class, the persona can serve as an expert witness in mock trials, historical debates, or comparative discussions about leadership and gender roles across time periods.

Virtual and hybrid learning environments benefit particularly from AI personas. When students can’t meet in person, having access to an interactive historical figure provides engagement that recorded lectures or reading assignments cannot match. Students working at different paces can spend as much or as little time with the persona as they need to grasp concepts, making education more personalized and self-directed.

Museums and historical sites can embed Joan of Arc personas into exhibits or visitor apps. Imagine visitors to a medieval history exhibit pulling out their phones to ask Joan about the armor displayed nearby or the weapons used in 15th-century warfare. This transforms passive observation into active learning and creates memorable experiences that extend engagement beyond the physical visit.

Content creators and historians can use AI personas as research tools or interview subjects for podcasts, videos, and written content. Rather than reading through hundreds of pages to find information about specific aspects of Joan’s life, you can ask targeted questions and receive contextually appropriate answers that you can verify against primary sources. This accelerates research and content development while maintaining historical accuracy.

Best Practices for Historical AI Personas

Creating effective historical AI personas requires balancing multiple considerations: historical accuracy, educational value, user engagement, and technical functionality. Following established best practices helps you navigate these sometimes competing priorities.

Prioritize historical accuracy in facts while accepting that personality interpretation involves some creative license. We have trial transcripts showing Joan’s words, but we cannot know her exact personality, sense of humor, or emotional responses to every situation. Base interpretations on documented evidence while acknowledging the gaps. Include a disclaimer that your persona represents a historically informed interpretation rather than claiming perfect accuracy.

Make historical context accessible without anachronism. Your Joan persona needs to explain medieval concepts to modern users, but these explanations should come from Joan’s perspective. Instead of saying “In the feudal system,” which sounds like a textbook, Joan might say, “Lords owe service to their king, and knights to their lords, just as peasants owe service to all above them. This is the natural order God established.” This provides context while maintaining character.

Establish clear boundaries for your persona. Historical figures shouldn’t comment on modern politics, endorse products, or engage with topics beyond their historical context. Include graceful responses for off-topic questions that redirect users back to appropriate subjects. This maintains educational integrity and prevents misuse of your creation.

Continuously update and improve your persona based on user interactions and new historical research. Estha’s platform makes updates simple, allowing you to refine responses, expand knowledge, and adjust personality elements without rebuilding from scratch. Consider setting up feedback mechanisms where users can report inaccuracies or suggest improvements.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

• Creating personas that lecture rather than converse; maintain dialogue feel
• Including modern concepts, language, or perspectives that break historical immersion
• Making the persona too perfect or sanitized; include human flaws and uncertainties
• Neglecting to consider different user knowledge levels and adjusting explanations accordingly
• Failing to test with actual target users before deployment
• Overcomplicating the initial build; start simple and expand based on needs

Remember that creating AI personas is an iterative process. Your first version doesn’t need to be perfect. Launch with core functionality, gather feedback from actual users, and refine based on real interactions. Estha’s accessible platform means you can make improvements quickly without technical barriers standing in your way.

Creating a Joan of Arc AI persona brings history to life in ways previous generations of educators and historians could only imagine. Through conversational interaction with a thoughtfully constructed historical character, students engage more deeply with the past, asking questions that spark curiosity and exploring perspectives that textbooks can only describe in abstract terms.

The process of building such a persona has been democratized by no-code platforms like Estha, removing technical barriers that once made AI development the exclusive domain of programmers and data scientists. Whether you’re an educator enhancing your curriculum, a museum professional creating interactive exhibits, or a history enthusiast wanting to explore new ways of sharing the past, you now have the tools to create sophisticated AI personas in minutes rather than months.

The skills you’ve learned creating a Joan of Arc persona extend far beyond this single historical figure. The same principles apply to building AI personas for any historical character, from ancient philosophers to modern civil rights leaders. Each persona you create becomes a teaching tool, conversation starter, and bridge between past and present, making history more accessible and engaging for everyone who interacts with it.