This is T+M's first ever bonus episode! This week we're going deep on one of the people we have often talked about, but never had the opportunity in the narrative to explore as well as we should have.

January 3 is celebrated by the Catholic Church as the feast day of Saint Genevieve, making now the perfect time to talk about this fascinating woman in greater depth and detail. Saint Genevieve bookends the entire arc of the Thugs and Miracles universe as one of the first major religious figures to speak with Childéric and Clovis; the latter has a church built in which to place her body, a church that would eventually take on the name of the Saint. On the back end of the bookend, Genevieve’s Church will eventually be replaced by the Panthéon and her bones will be burnt as a part of the French Revolution following the execution of Louis XVI.

Her story also serves as a reminder that while the Merovingian world was extremely patriarchal, there were women about who were willing and able to do their part to affect the narrative. Some, like Honoria, used treachery and deceit to their advantage, while others like Clotilde used their positions of power as the wives and mothers of kings to influence events. And then there were those like Genevieve who, despite not having such direct access to the levers of power, possessed that certain je ne sais quoi that marked them as leaders in their communities. Remembering all of these women, and the fact that history was never so easy or linear as simply passing power down the line from one king to the next, makes the story much more interesting.