Map of France -- 1477, 1435

Here is a map of France from 1477.  That's after the English were kicked out so the distribution of all the provinces are all wrong, but you can see some things of interest to the story regardless.  If you look at Poitou in the northwest, you can see Thouars.  That's not where Catherine's from exactly.  Her father is the seigneur of Tiffauges and Pouzauges -- not on the map.  But his ancestor was the Count of Thouars.  Tiffauges and Pouzauges are a bit west of there, Tiffauges being north of Pouzauges.  Pouzauges is where chapter one of the book takes place.

North of Poitou is the Pays de Retz, here a county, thus the "c. de Retz".  But in Gilles' time it was a barony, and presumably quite a bit larger.  Rais = Retz, incidentally.  The dot in the middle of the pays is Machecoul.  That's Gilles' castle -- nowadays referred to as Bluebeard's Castle.  :-)  He was born there and lived there until his father died and will move back there.  In real life there seems to be some question as to whether his mother died before his father or survived him and abandoned her sons.  Regardless they moved in with her father, Jean d'Craon.  His castle, Champtoce-sur Loire is not shown on the map, but north of Machecoul is the Loire river and if you traveled east a bit from there you'd run into it.

Also easily viewable on the map is La Tremouille, on the eastern edge of Poitou, and east past Touraine and Berry, the Comte de Sancerre and east of there is the Duchy of Burgundy (Bourgogne), but in 1420, Burgundy was much much larger.  Almost half of France and stretching from the coast all the way to there.  Burgundy and the Pays de Retz would be neighbors.   Bretagne is Brittany.  And I think that's most of the places I've mentioned.  I will try to come up with a better map at some point, that shows the provinces as they were at the start of the book.

This second map shows the domains of Plantagenet (England), Valois, and Burgundy more or less as they were at the beginning of the book.  It's worth pointing out that these borders are always changing.  I like that this map shows Brittany as a separate entity.  I'd also like this time to paste a bit about the war from La-Bas by J. K. Huysmans:

"Pardon the interruption, but I am not so sure that Jeanne d'Arc's intervention was a good thing for France."
"Why not?"
"I will explain. You know that the defenders of Charles were for the most part Mediterranean cut-throats, ferocious pillagers, execrated by the very people they came to protect. The Hundred Years' War, in effect, was a war of the South against the North. England at that epoch had not got over the Conquest and was Norman in blood, language, and tradition. Suppose Jeanne d'Arc had stayed with her mother and stuck to her knitting. Charles VII would have been dispossessed and the war would have come to an end. The Plantagenets would have reigned over England and France, which, in primeval times before the Channel existed, formed one territory occupied by one race, as you know. Thus there would have been a single united and powerful kingdom of the North, reaching as far as the province of Languedoc and embracing peoples whose tastes, instincts, and customs were alike. On the other hand, the coronation of a Valois at Rheims created a heterogeneous and preposterous France, separating homogeneous elements, uniting the most incompatible nationalities, races the most hostile to each other, and identifying us—inseparably, alas!—with those stained-skinned, varnished-eyed munchers of chocolate and raveners of garlic, who are not Frenchmen at all, but Spaniards and Italians. In a word, if it hadn't been for Jeanne d'Arc, France would not now belong to that line of histrionic, forensic, perfidious chatterboxes, the precious Latin race—Devil take it!"

Huysmans, J.-K. (Joris-Karl); Wallace, Keene (2011-03-23). Là-bas (p. 28). Kindle Edition.

While his conclusions about which race was preferable are his own, I thought it worth including as a point, about the nature of the Hundred Years war.  It's not England versus France -- that was the Norman Conquest, rather this is about the Normans trying to remain in control of their original territories.  To call it the "English Invasion" as the map does is utterly incorrect.  These are lands which belonged to the Normans before England did.