• It was ludicrous that two of the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail ... [ Aka. HB&HG ], should bring a case against the American novelist Dan Brown, ... [ Henry Lincoln kept his head, well below the parapet ! ]. Winning the case would have ...[ required the duo to have established ] in the High Court that their supposedly factual history of the ...[ Catholic ] church was effectively, a work of fiction ! Surely a first [even] for those two academian; ...[ are they] kamikaze historians[ ?]
  By rejecting their claim that [ Dan Brown's best-seller ], The Da Vinci Code ...[ Aka. DVC ], was based on their earlier work, Justice Peter Smith yesterday denied posterity ...[ a most ] amusing legal footnote. (( though he did have his litle bit of fun))
  But consider this: did Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh really lose yesterday? HB&HG is back in the top 40 book-sales-chart, thanks to the publicity generated by this case. It has not done ...[ the ] sales of DVC any harm either. And here's the clincher: both are published by Random House. Is it [just] possible that all sides were secretly in this together? Conspiracy theories clearly ...[ abound ]. "
  
  ~ with thanks to the editorial comment, on page 34,
  The Independent, Saturday: 8/04/2006.

Well No! this is not the conclusion of the debate, No not at all!. Its not even the point of the debate. Tell me. Don't you think it was significant that, "Our 'Enry" wasn't there in court ?

As any knowledgable member of the Saunier Society will tell you, Henry Lincoln, ( occasional script writter for some of the early episodes of the Dr Who TV serries ), was the original Anglo-Saxon disseminator of all things mysterious or conspiritorial about that little French village in the Aude Valley. It was he, who by way of two excelent BBC TV documentaries in the 1980's, somewhat predated even Messrs. Baigent and Leigh. In fact, it was'nt until they came on the scene, that any form of Messianic conspiracy appeared in this story.

On the other hand, from a French point of view, members of L'association Terre de Rhedae, would tell it all rather differently, and after all, this is a French story set in France, even when reading Mr Brown's fantasy. For our Gallic cousins, the story revolves around three twentieth century French posers, Noel Corbu, Henri Buthion, and Pierre Plantard, and has long since passed into the Gallic Psyche, thanks to an otherwise insignificant French author, Gerard De Sede. And yes, this was an altogether different type of conspiricy.

But for the more romantic Francophiles, ( the purists maybe ), l'initiative de Jean-Claude De Brou, le phénomène "Pommes bleues" , Aka. "Le 17 Janvier Pommes bleues", ( the society that isn't really a society ! ? ), they who guard the more essoteric strands of this story, ( echos of Le Prieure de Sion ? perhaps! ).

Dan Brown, of course, is not the first renown author to venture unwittingly into this Gothic quagmire of nightmare and intrigue. Homberto Eco, in his second novel "Facults Pendulum", was considered to have sent up " The Holy Blood and The Holly Grail " big time. Whilst Steven Spielberg's "Strange Encounters of the third kind", you may be surprised to learn, added the first touch of Sci-FI to this Gallic enigma.

Finally, consider the following commentary in french:

• 
  Le mystère lié à ce petit village de l'Aude est désormais de renommée mondiale. La publication de best-sellers tels que "L'Or de Rennes", de Gérard de Sède, "L'énigme sacrée" de Henry Lincoln (voix de fond), Michael Baigent et Richard Leigh ou encore du "Da Vinci Code" de Dan Brown y a fortement contribué. Le thème de Rennes-le-Château agit comme une sorte de matrice dont sort les travaux les plus divers, certains traités avec plus ou moins de sérieux, d'autres avec plus ou moins de rigueur dans la méthode.
  L'énigme tourne autour de l'abbé Bérenger Saunière, curé du village de 1885 à Février 1909, date ou il démissionne, et qui en 1917 mourut en laissant un domaine et un ensemble de constructions dont on a bien du mal à comprendre d'ou vint le financement. Ainsi l'abbé aurait peut-être mis à jour un trésor important, voire fabuleux, ou bien aurait-il découvert un troublant secret dont il aurait tiré ses profits... un secret d'état? de dynastie? d'église?... ou bien ou bien ou bien... et voici que déjà la matrice se met en marche...