Pocahontas only surviving daughter of the king". Pocahontas was her father's "delight and darling", according to the colonist Captain Ralph Hamor but she was not in line to inherit a position as a "weroance", subchief, or "mamanatowick" (paramount chief). Instead, Powhatan's brothers, sisters, and his sisters' children all stood in line to succeed him. In his "A Map of Virginia" John Smith explained how matrilineal inheritance worked among the Powhatan: Pocahontas is most famously linked to the English colonist Captain John Smith, who arrived in Virginia with a hundred other settlers in April 1607, at the behest of the London Company.
Historical figure plays and an epic poem. Joan had become a symbol of national pride and the Catholic faith, helping unite a country that had been divided by the recent wars of religion. The reality of the historical Joan was subordinated to the need for a symbol of feminine strength, Christian virtue and resistance to the English. George Bernard Shaw, introducing his 1923 play "Saint Joan", discussed representations of Joan by other authors. He felt that William Shakespeare's depiction in "Henry VI, Part 1" was constrained from making her a "beautiful and romantic figure" by political considerations. Voltaire's version in his poem