Fantasies of Failing Empire in La Belle Hélène de Constantinople

In the fifteenth-century prose version of La Belle Hélène de Constantinople, written by Jehan Wauquelin for Philip of Burgundy as he planned a crusade that never took place, Rome is besieged by pagan armies and only saved by the intervention of the Emperor of Constantinople and the King of England. Wauquelin’s investment in the idea of crusade, however, proves ideologically inconsistent throughout the text; whatever unifying fantasies the narrative may project (of crusade, of dynasty, of empire), it also subverts that unity by repeatedly linking the body of Helayne, subject to the most outrageous cruelty and mutilation, to the integrity of the city of Rome, the seat of both spiritual and imperial authority.