Vulgar History - Regency Era Trans Icon Chevalière d'Éon (revisited)

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is

00:00:14.280 Anne Foster, and we are at the tail end of our Regency season. Just a few more episodes

00:00:19.080 left in this really interesting season that we've been doing, looking at the real stories

00:00:23.240 of the Regency era, a time period that's best known for Jane Austen novels and for

00:00:28.640 that's when Bridgerton takes place, ostensibly. But we've been looking at a lot of interesting

00:00:33.820 people who are that sort of heteronormative marriage market type people, including Jane

00:00:40.540 Austen herself, who never married. Today, we're talking about Le Chevalier d'Anne, who was a

00:00:47.780 pioneer and an icon, a transester. She was a trans woman living in England during the Regency

00:00:55.900 era. Previous to that, she was living in France. Previous to that, she was in Russia,

00:01:00.080 in France before that. Fascinating, amazing story. And we first shared this story of the

00:01:06.300 Chevalier d'Anne on Vulgar History in 2022. And I just thought I wanted to revisit it for our

00:01:12.320 Regency season now that we've talked a lot about some of the people who the Chevalier has dealings

00:01:17.660 with. People like Prinny shows up, the Prince of Wales. Joseph, the Chevalier de St. George is in

00:01:25.760 the story. And also I wanted to share this because this is the first queer history episode that we

00:01:30.880 ever did on vulgar history back in 2022. And my guest was the amazing author, Maya Dean,

00:01:36.940 who is the author of a book called Wrath Goddess Sing. And that's why she was on my podcast while

00:01:41.280 she was promoting Wrath Goddess Sing, a book that is still available, hardcover, paperback,

00:01:45.940 ebook, audiobook, can't recommend it enough. It's such a great book. Maya was an incredible guest

00:01:50.280 And she really did such a great job, I think, for me, for my first foray into looking at a queer figure from history, explaining queer history and the complexity of it and how you have to kind of decode the way that people are describing their own lives at their time to understand them as we might understand them today.

00:02:08.140 And I do want to mention before we get into enjoying this episode again, the story of the Chevalier Day on, in honor of all of the queer and queer coded stories we've looked at during this Regency series, which have been, I feel like at least half of the stories we've looked at during this series, I'm doing a little fundraiser for the Trevor project.

00:02:26.020 So if you want to get a limited edition Ringer Tea, designed by a friend of the podcast, Yanyu Pater, also a queer artist, you can go to vulgarhistory.com slash Trevor.

00:02:39.300 It's called that because it's raising funds for the Trevor Project, which is a suicide prevention hotline organization based out of the United States that focuses on helping out members of the LGBTQIA plus community.

00:02:51.820 and it's a great organization to support and i wanted to to just i love doing a fundraiser i

00:02:59.300 love marshalling the tits out brigade together for for a good cause anyway the design for this

00:03:05.920 ringer t does i'm a yan yupater so it features all of the queer and queer coded figures from 0.83

00:03:11.640 this regency era it says the regency queer uh and that was just a pun i thought of myself like 0.52

00:03:18.160 regency era or like regency queer uh and so it says that regency queer uh and you've got the

00:03:24.360 chevalier diane is on there and lister the ladies of glenn goughlin the ladies of glenn goughlin's 0.53

00:03:29.280 dog called sappho is on there georgiana duchess of devonshire um mary wilson craft mary shelley

00:03:36.700 it's a beautiful design and when you buy a t-shirt you can also make a donation there for the trevor

00:03:41.800 project and again go to vulgarhistory.com slash trevor and that fundraiser is going to be going

00:03:47.300 on until the end of May. Anyway, without further ado, like honestly, enjoy this iconic vulgar

00:03:54.660 history episode about the amazing Chevalier Dayon with special guest Maya Dean.

00:04:03.760 I'm so excited today. I'm here with Maya Dean, author of, so at the time this podcast comes out,

00:04:10.000 your book will have like been out for like a week, but we're recording it before it comes out. So can

00:04:13.660 just like first of all tell everybody about your book please sure hi i'm maya dean my my book which

00:04:20.160 will be out by the time you hear this is wrath gotta sing which is a retelling of the life of

00:04:25.980 achilles from biliad as the trans woman that she was which is a bold claim but you know

00:04:32.880 so wrath gotta sing really explores alternate and submerged readings of familiar myths to give us

00:04:40.700 Achilles as she might have been in the Bronze Age in a world that was just on the brink of collapse

00:04:47.720 a world that was in many ways much nicer to live in than the world of the next thousand years 0.79

00:04:55.300 in large parts of the region like Mycenaean women had equal pay apparently so just from like looking

00:05:01.680 at like the what's out there like your bio on your website and stuff like you've been into

00:05:05.560 like this mythology since a very young age right lifelong absolutely I feel like so for me and my

00:05:13.080 I feel like you are for like the Trojan War and like Greek mythology as I am for like the women

00:05:19.000 of Tudor history which is just like from like a weirdly young age it's just like this is my thing

00:05:23.760 and here we go yeah yeah so I'm excited for you like that this book is coming out that is

00:05:28.820 you get to explore all this stuff oh gosh yeah the Tudor period is so fascinating you get so many

00:05:34.000 big personalities it's oh no exactly and it's not about me this is about you but actually today

00:05:40.400 we're talking so you're joining me both because you have this book coming out and because i got

00:05:44.600 the best email from your publicist saying like maya has this book coming out and here are some

00:05:48.240 other things that she can talk about as well and one of them was trans women of 18th century france

00:05:53.220 and i was like literally as i read that i was like i'm currently researching a trans woman from

00:05:58.320 18th century france so like this is the perfect opportunity so today you're joining me and we're

00:06:03.520 we're talking about a woman whose name is what we're going to call her la chevalier which was

00:06:09.600 kind of a title that she was given at one point it's a french word it means like night effectively

00:06:15.820 right it's like it's a a role that she earned so she was a sign male at birth was a woman and so

00:06:23.920 the name i'm just going to do my best with an extremely long french name her name was charlotte

00:06:31.060 Jean-Vivre Louise Augusta Andrea Timotea D'Or de Beaumont she kind of carried around a lot of

00:06:38.400 names yeah she had it's all of the names which is why I don't know in history like she's mostly

00:06:45.480 like people refer to her when you look it up it's like the chevalier like that is how she

00:06:49.720 tends to be known and I feel like in her life that's kind of like what she went by maybe

00:06:53.400 la chevalier yeah I love that it's just sort of like the presence of that just being like it's

00:06:58.320 not just like oh i'm anne it's like oh hi i'm la chevalier like okay like step back like already

00:07:03.560 this is a cool person oh yeah no she made a big deal out of it in fact that was like one of the 0.98

00:07:07.700 ways like she was an early feminist and one of the ways that she related to the other early 1.00

00:07:12.560 feminists who thought she was a cis woman who had been raised as a boy but one of the ways she

00:07:17.240 related to them was by like mary wollstonecraft actually mentions her in passing in some of her 0.98

00:07:22.820 writings talking about how like la chevalier proves that women can be warriors and she knew

00:07:29.920 that like she would be read that way she intended like this was she wanted to be understood and 0.84

00:07:35.300 accepted by her cis women peers definitely she positioned herself that way intentionally

00:07:40.160 yeah and so what like we're gonna just kind of like go through like birth to death like what

00:07:45.320 was her situation but it's like the gender stuff is such a big part of kind of the mythos that she

00:07:51.360 like built up around herself like how she kind of like used that for pr reasons but i want to 0.79

00:07:55.960 mention that like her life was also so interesting right aside from that just like the espionage of 0.89

00:08:03.360 it all like there's there's a lot to get into la chevaliere it was born october 5th 1728 in burgundy

00:08:09.480 into a poor noble family in a wine bearing region and i mentioned that because wine does become up

00:08:15.800 later it's like a i think that she's smuggling oh my gosh burgundy a lot of stuff was happening

00:08:20.940 in Burgundy actually like Abbe de Choisy better known occasionally as the Comtesse de Bar

00:08:27.000 actually lived as a woman in Burgundy for some years and wrote a very famous

00:08:33.240 best-selling memoir that probably was still pretty accessible in Leah's childhood yeah oh my god I

00:08:40.060 love that did not know that detail so yeah Burgundy and the sort of like the early years

00:08:45.400 like just from what I've read it's like pretty much it's kind of like like most people alive

00:08:50.060 at that point in france like we don't know a lot about like the early years because no one really

00:08:53.400 wrote it down so i just kind of know about like she excelled in her schooling um she went into

00:08:57.920 military training by age 35 she'd gotten a law degree published books about the french tax system 0.54

00:09:04.280 been knighted and became a celebrated fencer oh yeah she was like a fantastic like even

00:09:10.580 much later in her life in england she spent a fair bit of time giving exhibition fencing matches

00:09:16.520 i'm sure george de boulon will come up at some point yeah so the so just like right away before

00:09:24.900 we get into the rest of it it's like this is a person who's like really smart really educated

00:09:29.020 really athletic and then skilled in these in these impressive ways fencing to me is like

00:09:36.620 a really epic skill oh yeah i also want to mention so like like much of what we know about her early

00:09:43.100 life comes from so she wrote an autobiography but i don't think it was published and i think it was

00:09:48.280 she like it was ghost written like she hired someone else to write it for her so we get but

00:09:52.260 she wrote these other books as well so in the introduction to this never completed autobiography

00:09:57.040 some modern day historians said that by 1758 she was a rising star among the young aristocratic

00:10:03.020 elite who hoped to serve the monarchy in some important capacity so she was just like smart

00:10:08.140 she's charismatic she was talented and it's just kind of like she was from like what did i say it's

00:10:13.500 like a noble but poor family but she was like elevating herself just by virtue of being like

00:10:17.820 so good basically yeah her family had like the sort of positioning where they they had noble

00:10:25.340 enough blood and all that to be positioned where they could excel and could rise themselves through

00:10:30.300 like skilled bureaucracy and stuff and she was a talented intriguer so yeah no she was like

00:10:37.000 ambitious like she was like i'm just gonna like make my mark in the world here we go 0.57

00:10:41.240 so she was given the role of a diplomat to russia and england like officially but privately what

00:10:49.920 she was doing was she worked for the most clandestine spy service in france le secret

00:10:54.800 du roi or the king's secret so this is like you could probably explain this better than i can but

00:11:00.160 like the king was like suspicious and he wanted to have these secret spies working directly for

00:11:04.600 him like not going through the rest of the political everything so she i love this this is

00:11:10.340 like it's like a james bond moment yeah a lot of people cast doubts on like some of the claims she

00:11:17.180 made about her spying in russia mostly about the idea that she spent most of it you know

00:11:23.840 looking gorgeous in dresses but i mean that's not particularly impossible no exactly so yeah

00:11:31.240 that's the thing there's something like so she's charged with fostering good relations with a

00:11:35.120 russian court so empress elizabeth is who is there and so okay one article i read said like 1.00

00:11:41.840 the empress liked to have balls like metamorphosis balls where like gender non-conformity was like

00:11:47.800 celebrated and that's what was done which is not to say that's how or why she started potentially 1.00

00:11:52.820 dressing in this glamorous in glamorous dresses but it's like if it's already a court where like

00:11:58.980 gender is not strictly binary like maybe great opportunity exactly exactly exactly and then i 0.55

00:12:05.500 think i saw something about where it's like because she was presenting as a woman she's

00:12:09.160 able to get into places like men maybe couldn't go to like learn some more of the secrets to like 1.00

00:12:13.200 get closer to the empress and that sort of thing yeah exactly like uh but certainly what she's in

00:12:18.960 her memoirs she talks about essentially being able to get to all sorts of places that men couldn't go

00:12:23.800 because there are so many historians who are trying to narrate her as cis obviously there's

00:12:31.280 like a line of uh critique where people say that well maybe she was exaggerating those stories to

00:12:37.160 make her herself seem more useful but like probably not honestly i've like i've had this

00:12:43.960 in a couple other episodes of my podcast where like if someone writes their memoir

00:12:48.160 and it says something that historians like that just doesn't fit into this like binary concept

00:12:53.040 they're like oh well she's probably exaggerating like not just her but other people are like

00:12:56.420 this probably isn't true and I'm like well this is her memoir and like I trust her more than I

00:13:00.720 trust like a 20th century like cis white man being like I don't believe it it's like well

00:13:06.000 I believe her if I'm gonna believe anyone frankly oh yeah absolutely it's it's really it's really

00:13:13.200 an interesting thing I mean like this is uh this is what like uh Catherine the Great is in court

00:13:17.960 that kind of thing period elizabeth i mean it wasn't uh like a great like a junior figure at

00:13:26.060 that point not yet yes yeah like in the fabulous and wildly historically inaccurate the great it

00:13:34.520 would be like season one yes yes exactly i don't know anyway i find it like this is why i'm so

00:13:40.320 happy to have you here because like so much of this history it's just been interpreted for so

00:13:45.340 along by like cis white men who are like trying to make these stories fit into a paradigm that

00:13:50.100 they understand and part of it i think with the chevalier is like well she's so impressive she

00:13:55.120 did these like it's like surely a woman couldn't have done these things so it must have been a man

00:14:00.020 in disguise but like then like the contortions you have to make to make that fit a story that

00:14:05.380 clearly is the story of a trans woman so yeah exactly season one of the great is what's

00:14:09.700 happening apparently she dazzled in her post so like she was like in the fashion the outfits and

00:14:15.760 again just like the charisma and she's so smart and i'm sure like quick and witty so then france

00:14:20.580 entered into the seven years war with britain and le chevalier was ordered to return to become a

00:14:25.980 captain oh and this is where she was later admitted to the prestigious order of saint louis

00:14:30.360 and honored with the title chevalier which means so it's an honorific it's just kind of it's the

00:14:36.140 equivalent of being like dame or like lady whatever after the war ended she was appointed

00:14:41.220 as liaison to the english court but again working directly for the king with secret orders to scope

00:14:46.720 at the coastline for possible french invasion of england yeah that came out that came in handy

00:14:51.600 later yeah so it was a prominent position but it wouldn't last so according to this the one

00:14:59.440 source i was looking at here uh she enjoyed england a little bit too much um she was strongly

00:15:04.700 reprimanded for importing too much wine and i feel like you can't take the burgundy out of the girl

00:15:09.420 like clearly uh so then within six months she was fired for insolence and given two weeks to return

00:15:17.380 to france so she knew that if and when she returned to france she probably she'd be sent to the jail

00:15:22.060 to the best deal so she just decided to like not return she's just like what if i stay in england

00:15:28.720 so the king which is louis god i'm so bad at telling the louis apart 15th

00:15:34.700 furiously ordered her to be extradited to france but the british foreign minister refused declaring

00:15:39.680 her she was free to stay in britain as a private citizen so she's just like the scandal of it you

00:15:45.920 know just she set herself apart from just like everyone else right away because it's like the

00:15:49.700 king is demanding her back like the foreign minister is here like she's just like at that

00:15:53.220 so already she's like a celebrity in that extent it gets even wilder because uh the way she got

00:15:59.220 reprimanded for insolence was pretty weird um a new ambassador was assigned to england and within

00:16:06.320 a short period of time they clearly did not like each other she quickly started accusing him of

00:16:11.260 trying to drug her at dinner at which point she made these accusations public so then he sued her

00:16:18.480 for libel which i mean it's britain it if there's a constant that unites the 18th century to today

00:16:25.940 it's that it's really easy to sue people for libel so she lost that case but the british

00:16:31.360 public sided with her and just started like pelting this guy when they saw him with like

00:16:36.120 you know just fruits and vegetables like there was this huge scandal and that's how she got

00:16:41.420 like recalled for insolence so i'm just wondering like why was he trying to drug her yeah

00:16:47.860 i love i love there's been like other stories in the podcast too where it's like

00:16:53.300 the people of britain just like they riot at a moment's notice so it's like this is our star

00:16:59.240 and we will defend her and it's yeah i appreciate that consistency so everything that she's doing 0.94

00:17:05.600 is just like the most like this is not like a low-key life that she is living the french foreign

00:17:12.360 ministry made several attempts to kidnap and arrest her in retaliation she made her most scandals 0.93

00:17:19.360 move yet which is she published a book of state secrets full of correspondence from le secret du

00:17:24.600 roi full of salacious details and the promise there was more to come unless the french king

00:17:29.520 stopped trying to bring her back yeah i think she held back like the invasion plans but this is like

00:17:35.520 it's epic i love i love that they're like you're coming back and she's like oh really like what

00:17:39.560 if i just like expose your entire like secret james bond operation and and it worked so the

00:17:45.820 king agreed to leave her alone with a generous 12 000 livres salary on the condition that she

00:17:50.780 did not reveal his worst secrets so she was in england she's just this like fabulous french

00:17:55.580 woman in england in political exile but i think i would assume based on the the scandal and the

00:18:01.100 stuff that had happened already like she was so she continued to be a celebrity like people are

00:18:05.820 just like all about her in england so it's like of course she'd stay there like they left her there

00:18:09.420 okay and then this is where i'm just like please help me with this so around 1770 rumors started 0.69

00:18:14.440 to spread potentially started by her that she had actually been born a woman but had been raised as

00:18:19.660 a man in order to receive a family inheritance yeah that's kind of one of the ways you do it

00:18:27.640 like in some ways i think she was learning from some of the lessons that you could take away from

00:18:33.960 like the lives of early 17th early 18th century french trans women which we'll talk about more

00:18:39.900 later because i think she decided look no we have to actually convince everyone that i'm assigned 1.00

00:18:45.300 female at birth or else i will never get what you what i want she probably did start the rumors 0.99

00:18:50.140 herself because i mean she was literally a spy who intrigued constantly and used public opinion 1.00

00:18:56.340 to get what she wanted and yeah i would not be surprised in the least there was like a bet on 0.99

00:19:03.200 the london stock exchange just like giant betting pool which is like perfect because that lets her

00:19:10.080 do like this this virtuous no no i will not it's like humiliating that you're even betting about

00:19:17.000 this i will not deign to reveal one or another which of course inflames the speculation even

00:19:24.140 further the betting pool lasts for like a year yeah no i've got in my notes here it says there

00:19:29.240 was three to two odds that she was a woman. I mean, it's probably not surprising. If we look

00:19:34.860 at representations of her from her own lifetime, and especially from when she was relatively young,

00:19:41.680 she's generally portrayed before she was outed as being quite beautiful. And she probably didn't

00:19:48.180 look particularly masculine given that most of those reports about that really started to happen

00:19:54.540 after she died. No. And I think just from what I understand, she was also, I think like a

00:19:59.220 short person like for a short person with like a higher pitched voice anyway so it wasn't like

00:20:05.960 outside the realm like so when she's like oh yeah no actually i am one of them's like oh yeah that 0.96

00:20:10.160 tracks like like that that tracks so apparently at this time apparently forced to hire protection 0.98

00:20:16.820 just to safely step inside her house because people wanted to like rip off her clothes 0.99

00:20:20.420 to be like what is your gender like people are just so like it's such a i don't know like just

00:20:27.260 hearing about these like paparazzi level moments from like golden times i'm just like like humanity

00:20:32.680 has been the same forever like there's always these like celebrities and people just like

00:20:36.700 crowds follow them and whatever yeah what's determined weird enough to be worth invading

00:20:42.480 privacy has varied culturally but the fact that you can randomly invade people's privacy if you're

00:20:47.780 curious and spread that to everyone else that's been constant i would argue since the bronze age

00:20:53.360 yeah well no it's giving me like early 2000s like Perez Hilton upskirt shots of like Lindsay 0.95

00:20:59.060 Lohan or whatever right like people are just like wanting to rip off her clothes because she was like

00:21:03.520 they just they want to like consume her so yes so the bet was abandoned oh so that an envoy from

00:21:10.480 arrived in England to determine the truth like about was she a woman so she told all she revealed

00:21:17.600 she was a woman raised male by a father desperate for a son and heir which again as you said it's

00:21:23.020 like yeah you want to be able to start living as a woman so you're just like guess what i've always

00:21:27.820 been a woman but in a way that people would understand oh yeah tons of like mid-20th century

00:21:33.260 american trans women did the same thing like it was a very common approach yeah so let's see so

00:21:39.960 the question was brought all the way to the court of the king's bench on july 2nd 1777 the english

00:21:45.320 government formally pronounced she who had called herself the chevalier d'on until that day was an

00:21:50.500 individual who did not possess what the Appalachian man promised. And then she was a virago disguised

00:21:57.720 in a uniform. I had to look up that word. Do you know that word? Virago kind of signifies

00:22:03.280 female masculinity. It's a Latin word that kind of suggests anything ranging from butchiness to

00:22:11.280 like on its boundaries, it can sort of shade into that other like really ancient trope of the

00:22:17.880 tribad. Tell me about that.

00:22:20.500 The Trabad is basically this like classical era, but also through the early modern era 0.95

00:22:26.800 conception of like sort of an obligate lesbian who's partially virilized genitally, which 0.95

00:22:33.380 of course would mean you have to, you have to like have to go after women.

00:22:37.460 It's just the way things work because it's very like, you know, sexuality was super gendered. 0.99

00:22:43.860 So it's this combination of, well, this woman will act like a man.

00:22:47.740 yeah so they're saying like they're saying like okay this person is not a man there she is a

00:22:53.680 virago which is basically like a mannish woman it's kind of what they're saying yeah but this

00:22:59.280 is like okay so it's official like the english government formally pronounced that she's a woman

00:23:04.540 so this is from i think the article from um it's a site called them.us so this was the perfect way 1.00

00:23:10.600 to affect a public gender transition without losing her status or popularity by claiming 1.00

00:23:14.480 to have been a woman pretending to be a man all along and then taking one step further she wedded

00:23:21.380 her public transition to her pious religious nature arguing that because she was at heart a

00:23:25.640 good honest christian woman she could no longer live a lie and everyone's like okay fair enough

00:23:30.940 well i guess you can't allow you to be a man anymore yeah exactly and actually there were

00:23:34.920 there were a bunch of little things which some people some people have interpreted as ambivalence

00:23:41.560 because it's convenient, but which I think is better understood as protesting just for the

00:23:47.920 right amount. So like, for instance, there was this whole kerfuffle over whether she could wear

00:23:52.640 her military medals. She was very insistent that she could. But then there was this bit where she

00:23:56.980 was like, am I to be forced to wear women's clothing all the time? Surely that's not progressive.

00:24:04.260 maybe you could fund it and then the king pays for a wardrobe by

00:24:11.960 marie tonette's genius dressmaker oh my god we're definitely going to get to that because

00:24:17.920 well i'll just say right now so like she went back okay so she's officially declared a woman

00:24:21.840 age 49 just for the record yeah so she negotiated her return to france and part of that like you

00:24:26.380 just said was like but i'll need gorgeous dresses like who will give me those and the king's like

00:24:32.100 okay i will yeah she agreed to publicly present as a woman for the rest of her life so she went

00:24:37.420 back to france um she was formerly presented at the court of versailles so there was a four hour

00:24:42.060 makeover montage so included powdered hair and an elaborate gown outfitted by marie antoinette's

00:24:47.900 own dressmaker rose bertin so it's not just like a coming out moment it's like a coming out moment

00:24:54.760 like dressed in like like marie antoinette like in an outfit that takes four hours to like put on

00:25:01.200 yeah it's very much an i'm on top of the world haha i win moment like in the movie that i'm

00:25:06.940 imagining in my mind this is just this amount of just like the it's like what is it i don't know

00:25:11.640 any movie with like the prom or the person like coming down the stairs and everyone's like what 0.97

00:25:15.900 the nerd is beautiful like her coming out just like having been dressed personally by maria

00:25:21.460 and finna's dresser just like i've arrived like this is me it's beautiful um okay so the way that

00:25:27.420 this article that says um being an 18th century noblewoman after having been a soldier spy and

00:25:33.220 diplomat was kind of like not is a little boring it's kind of like well i don't want to just like

00:25:38.020 hang around a court doing whatever like i'm a spy i'm a soldier like she wants to keep doing stuff

00:25:41.920 so for instance when france started with the colonists in the american revolution she asked

00:25:46.080 to be put back in uniform to assemble an all-female battalion to fight the british i love it i mean i

00:25:53.940 I think that that's best understood. Like it would be easy to decontextualize it and treat 0.70

00:25:59.440 it as just some sort of weird pipe dream she had. But I think it's best understood in the context

00:26:04.060 of that, you know, figures like Wollstonecraft were talking about her as this like proof that

00:26:10.280 women can fight it. Like, yeah, I think there's a political element to that, especially given like 0.96

00:26:15.200 some of her later like public work as an abolitionist. I'm not surprised that her 0.99

00:26:20.020 feminism and her abolition would you know appear in the form of well let's see if we can form 1.00

00:26:26.120 regiments yeah no i love it i love that she's like she's got all this military experience she's

00:26:31.000 like let me use it and then like her life is inherently like you said like it's proof that

00:26:35.920 like women can do this the government apparently to that suggestion said well why don't you join 0.85

00:26:41.480 a convent yeah like just in terms of like not her being so progressive for the era and just 1.00

00:26:51.740 being faced with people who are just like does not compute like no no a group of women sounds

00:26:58.360 like a convent to me yeah i know if she'd been 30 years younger she would probably have been 1.00

00:27:02.900 guillotined with a bunch of revolutionary era french feminists yeah luckily she had the goods

00:27:09.720 on the king and so she kind of was safe in that way so she returned to london because frankly her 0.80

00:27:15.380 life just seemed like a lot better there she said she's going back there to settle up some business

00:27:18.940 but it potentially was more just to escape the strict life that she was being forced into in

00:27:23.620 france so in london she continued to write because remember she'd written all those books before

00:27:27.560 and she collected a large library of early feminist works which i love like what you're

00:27:32.660 saying like her mary wallstonecraft like she's like just as a figure of this time she's like 0.98

00:27:36.940 so into just like let's get on this like let feminism like let's make it happen like she's

00:27:43.200 into it while she was in england though the french revolution happened so actually like 1.00

00:27:47.140 luckily she was out of town so the french monarchy was abolished meaning she no longer

00:27:52.600 had the protection or the pension that she had been getting from the monarchy or for people who

00:27:58.420 don't think she was actually a woman and that she was doing this as some sort of 0.52

00:28:02.580 for 4d testing any reason to live as a woman if she wasn't one yeah exactly so it's like

00:28:11.340 if the king had said okay you have to live as a woman and so she did like once the king died like 0.72

00:28:17.140 she didn't have to anymore she was like clearly this is what she was doing by choice like for 1.00

00:28:24.880 herself and then this part bums me out obviously the last season for life so she lived in poverty

00:28:29.360 she sold off her book collection but you were saying like she's giving fencing displays so 0.97

00:28:33.920 this was like a way that she's making some money it was just like showing off her cool fencing

00:28:37.060 skills and people like what a woman who's a fencer like she had this trademark like long 1.00

00:28:40.560 black dress that she would always wear yeah there were a bunch of exhibition matches with her and

00:28:45.620 joseph de boulogne the uh valier de saint george who is sometimes called the black mozart although

00:28:53.620 actually Mozart slept on his couch and they would first they were famous for being abolitionists

00:29:01.340 pressuring the British government to do something about the slave trade but second

00:29:05.020 they would do their exhibition matches together so like there are these political cartoons of just

00:29:11.540 you know her and just a double on just dueling but also punching the region the prince regent

00:29:21.200 so they were like yeah thank you for bringing that up as well because i love i love the story

00:29:26.700 of joseph as well i encountered it because the symphony here did a concert and i'm like oh this

00:29:31.840 musician i was like oh my god like i love the music i'm like who's this person i'm like oh

00:29:35.120 and it's this guy like quote unquote the black but basically they just mean like it's a black

00:29:38.700 man who lived at the same time as mozart who had like a white wig on so everyone's like oh the

00:29:42.220 black mozart like yeah but he was actually like he was amazing and he was actually a big influence

00:29:46.920 on Mozart yeah but I love the image of this like like this black man trans woman just like doing

00:29:52.320 these fencing displays and everyone's just like yeah we stand like we love you like oh my god

00:29:56.540 like so they're celebrities and really progressive like abolitionists like yeah I love this moment I

00:30:06.020 love I love and this is like the early 1800s so this is like if you want to put it into like

00:30:11.980 this is like Bridgerton era you know it's like that's happening with like the marriage

00:30:16.840 market and like whatever the regency and then at the same time like they're doing these fencing

00:30:20.840 displays like it's all happening all at the same time so she's making these fancy displays because

00:30:25.780 she needed money because she didn't have her pension for all of her military work and spy work

00:30:29.100 and then she lived the last few years of her life with a roommate who is another woman i haven't

00:30:34.760 seen anything actually like let's talk about that so i haven't seen anything about the chevalier

00:30:39.100 having any romantic connections with anyone did you have you come up on anything about like her

00:30:45.720 having a love life honestly no um which makes her relatively unusual compared to some of the

00:30:53.220 other famous french trans women who were somewhat famous for their love lives no um no one knows i

00:31:00.460 mean it just doesn't seem to come up now partially it could be that she was very disciplined about

00:31:05.220 her own pr so for all we know she had secret affairs that just never saw the light of day

00:31:12.040 but certainly certainly this was not something that was much talked about yeah and i find that

00:31:19.300 interesting in terms of how much her the fact that people are just like trying to rip off her clothes

00:31:24.640 like people are so interested in like every detail of her life but there's never any sort of like 0.89

00:31:28.800 scandal or rumors about her having affairs with anyone of any gender well granted people trying

00:31:34.680 to rip your clothes off it's a great reason to be paranoid about that kind of thing you know yeah

00:31:40.100 Yeah. And I agree. And that's a real hint. Like maybe you want to keep your love life private

00:31:43.840 if you don't want. Or potentially maybe you're a former spy and you don't trust anyone to see you

00:31:51.200 in such an intimate way, especially given what happened when she was no longer alive to protect

00:31:56.860 her privacy. Yes. So she was living with this woman for the last several years of her life.

00:32:02.240 And then she died in 1810. Her roommate discovered her body. And then I'll let you

00:32:06.840 describe what happened to her body then some physicians decided to examine her and they were 0.95

00:32:12.780 like oh look a penis it's perfect in every way at which point the scandal was worth a lot there's 0.93

00:32:20.360 actually like a drawing of her genitals in the british museum because people were very curious 1.00

00:32:27.760 her autopsy report also notes that you know just like okay also boobs very curvy but look a penis 1.00

00:32:35.800 and that then led to her defenders people who wanted to protect her reputation from the horrific 1.00

00:32:43.960 charge of being a trans woman which was a lot more scandalous in 1800 than in 1700 for reasons

00:32:50.020 to concoct various explanations as to why she was never really a trans woman and just had to

00:32:55.520 disguise herself as a woman for decades and decades and decades and decades for other reasons

00:33:01.740 yeah no it was like she lived openly as a woman for 33 years where it's like haha i'm a spy and

00:33:08.600 i'm gonna just like a woman like that's a long time like i know no one's that committed to the

00:33:15.120 bit unless it's actually something they care about no exactly so that's where it's like

00:33:19.180 like i was saying before like the contortions that i've been of historians trying to be like

00:33:23.940 okay this was this is a story of a man who because it was so clever and devious decided to dress as a

00:33:32.380 woman for 33 years i think some of them were doing it in kind of a horrifying attempt to

00:33:38.960 rescue her reputation which obviously is upsetting to me but at the same time yeah like

00:33:46.080 the contortions are extravagant well it's just like if it's like if there's two options and one

00:33:52.520 of them is like you know a to b here's the thing and the other one is just like what if you go from

00:33:56.180 a to z to this to this to this to this to this it's like one of these is way more likely than

00:34:01.140 the other one like the amount of work you have to go through to see her as anything other than a

00:34:05.520 trans woman is it just really speaks to how much people were committed well like you said like i

00:34:11.920 was thinking it was like people just couldn't wrap their head around it but what you're explaining

00:34:15.540 and i see now is they wanted to like preserve or like i don't know make her save her legacy

00:34:23.660 yeah like there were there were fencers too there were fencers there was at least one famous like

00:34:31.480 fencer who among other things was writing about how she and his father also a famous fencer

00:34:36.680 um were good friends and he refers to her as herself throughout but there's like a brief

00:34:43.700 aside you know just like oh yeah like sure it came out later she was a man the whole time um

00:34:48.420 moving on and like i think what we see is plenty of people were not ashamed to have known her

00:34:57.160 we're not ashamed of what she was but maybe didn't have the political vocabulary to say well

00:35:03.260 but actually but actually let's defend her womanhood on its own terms so keep going it's 0.99

00:35:09.440 such a complicated yet not complicated it's just such a shitty thing frankly like that she like she

00:35:17.360 had this cool life and she's so amazing and they're just like well let's finally reveal the 1.00

00:35:22.160 genitals like let's just like put them in the british museum yeah it's it's so gross they're

00:35:28.040 still there i mean the drawing not her body yeah where it's like she was famous well there was like

00:35:35.760 the bet about like is she a woman but she's famous for like all these other cool reasons

00:35:40.340 not just because of the question of gender and just to like to limit the legacy is just that

00:35:45.900 i think oh 100 but like i think we have to look at that in a context where it became much much

00:35:53.400 much much much harder to be a trans woman and in a lot of ways harder to be a trans woman in england

00:35:59.900 because um this is the period of time where like between like perfect time basically parallels the

00:36:07.280 massive like police crackdowns on so-called molly culture in england which is essentially 0.94

00:36:13.160 working class trans women and trans femmes i would call it a culture that consisted of working

00:36:18.500 class trans women and trans femmes and gay and bisexual men with a lot of space carved out for 1.00

00:36:24.800 the trans feminine but during yeah during her lifetime that stamping out and criminalizing

00:36:31.880 that entire cultural element was a huge thing that was ongoing in england whereas like a few 0.78

00:36:37.980 years before she was born the there was this massive bestseller which was the contested bars

00:36:44.740 memoirs the they're often referred to as the transvestite memoirs by cis historians but

00:36:51.680 yeah this like the climate she was born into would would have been in some ways more tolerant

00:36:57.600 of gender variance than the climate she died in which does explain kind of why she's drawn to

00:37:02.600 living there at the time like when she first went there uh-huh it would have been more tolerant than

00:37:07.620 when what it was like by the time she passed away yeah and by the time she passed away i think she

00:37:12.380 was she'd very heavily relied on essentially passing as cis um for the rest of her life

00:37:18.260 and having that validated

00:37:20.760 with like official decrees

00:37:22.760 and deeds and acts of parliament.

00:37:25.440 Yeah.

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00:39:58.460 See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.

00:40:05.340 and we're back which is just honestly like i can't it's so major to just be like not only like

00:40:11.660 like what's the proof that i'm a woman it's like well like this act of parliament like the french

00:40:17.020 king has said and so you're like okay like cool that's like what more proof do you need so she

00:40:24.440 was buried in the church of saint pancras old church um her remaining possessions were sold

00:40:29.340 at christie's auction house in 1813 and her grave is listed on the burdette coats memorial there as

00:40:35.240 one of the important graves lost the i don't know much about this but the beaumont society is a

00:40:41.000 long-standing organization for transgender people named after her i don't know if you know anything

00:40:45.220 about that organization um i don't but basically not long after she died like from the 19th century

00:40:55.500 to the present obviously trans people however we describe ourselves i mean the terminology

00:41:01.680 has changed a lot but we've been around forever have looked to her as you know an example of

00:41:08.920 someone who successfully got the king of France to declare her a woman like and just as evidence that

00:41:15.760 you can be like an incredibly talented trans woman I love her story for that and I love her

00:41:24.820 story just for being just this like scandalous like wild like who's just like i was a spy and

00:41:32.400 then it's just like i decided to stay in england so i'm just gonna like basically blackmail the

00:41:36.020 king like the audacity with which she lived is is great it's like it's such a good story

00:41:43.600 this is where it's like it's all intrinsically connected with like her identity like as a trans

00:41:48.600 women but and so which is why it bothers me to see her legacy being reduced to being like but

00:41:54.620 what were the genitals where it's like there's 10 000 other more interesting things to talk about 1.00

00:41:59.180 alas that seems to be the trans feminine condition and in trans misogynist societies 0.98

00:42:04.400 i think this is where i first heard about her so in 2012 uh the national portrait gallery in london

00:42:11.700 purchased a portrait of her which had been for a like no one knew who it was a portrait of they're

00:42:16.840 like a portrait of a middle-aged woman and then there was oh no this is a chevalier and then it

00:42:21.360 was but I think that's where there's a lot of press about the portrait being purchased the

00:42:25.220 identification of the portrait so that's where I had first heard about it and so now the portrait

00:42:30.540 I think itself it's I don't know I love it like 2012 was a good period of time in terms of like

00:42:36.060 the internet existing or whatever where this portrait came out and there's a lot of articles

00:42:39.560 a lot of discussion about it and that brought I think a new level of attention to her story

00:42:43.080 which is good well i think that one of the things that like one of the things that contemporary

00:42:49.400 representations of her show and then we touched on this a little bit before is just the extent

00:42:55.300 to which people kind of redrew her when they knew she was a trans woman like so especially

00:43:01.700 portraits that are from before her death portray her extremely differently she's just a younger

00:43:07.920 middle-aged woman an older middle-aged woman sometimes in the scandalous years where they're

00:43:12.440 speculating she's a very hot young woman blah blah blah and it's yeah it's just really revealing

00:43:20.100 that a relatively unremarkable portrait of her would go unlabeled for 200 years because it didn't

00:43:27.760 look stereotypically managed enough I love that she was at a level well for anyone I do in this

00:43:35.480 podcast I love when there's actual portraits of people because there's so many women in history

00:43:39.820 where there's not but i love that she was at a level of fame and importance that she was

00:43:44.120 portraits of her were done during her life i don't know so she has appeared as a character

00:43:48.860 in some fictional works this is the like legacy portion of it so there's a film in 1928 the spy

00:43:57.120 of madame pompadour 1959 okay this is a film loosely based on her life that portrays her as

00:44:02.920 a woman masquerading as a man which is like which is pretty much just taking her propaganda and

00:44:09.260 drowning with it which is fine yeah so that's the secret du chevalier d'on from 1959

00:44:13.900 2006 have you seen or are you familiar with the anime series the chevalier d'on i've heard of it

00:44:21.400 i haven't been able to actually track it down i'd love to what i know of it is that it's some sort

00:44:27.640 of like supernatural type thing where she like it's like she the spirit of her dead sister lives

00:44:33.400 in her body and she like switches back and forth between a masculine person and a feminine person

00:44:38.380 so almost like a sailor moon transformation so i love sailor moon but yeah

00:44:44.260 transmission in kind of the worst possible way i have not seen it but that is what i've heard

00:44:51.160 about it and that's also honestly when you look up the chevalier dale like a lot of your search

00:44:54.900 results are going to be about this anime series i'm interested in this and i've not listened to

00:44:58.580 it but the doctor who audio series has an episode featuring her which i think and she appears as an

00:45:05.820 unplayable character that gives out side quests in the video game assassin's creed unity

00:45:10.340 that's not a surprise but i i'm not familiar with the portrayal unity is one of the few

00:45:16.640 assassin's creeds i haven't played i don't know there's been a couple people done the podcast

00:45:20.660 where it's just when you're looking at like them in pop culture and it's like and they're

00:45:23.740 an assassin's creed i'm like should i play assassin's creed all these people well assassin's

00:45:28.240 is filled with historical easter eggs like yeah so yeah uh that's kind of there like as long as

00:45:36.100 you can get past the cheesy ridiculous sci-fi frame narrative there's a lot to like yeah no

00:45:45.020 and that's where i'm just like i forget who just a couple other historical figures i'm like they're

00:45:48.800 in assassin's creed i'm like they're in assassin's creed the more i hear about the more i'm like

00:45:53.140 i'm intrigued okay i want to talk to you we need to do so on my podcast we do a score

00:45:58.420 for everybody just on various categories and i'm going to get your thoughts about where the

00:46:04.740 chevalier is going to fall so there's four categories the first category is scandaliciousness

00:46:10.640 which is just as you can probably presume just kind of like how gossipy and like fantastic

00:46:17.700 was this person's life and story what's the scale the scale is uh zero to ten so ten being the

00:46:23.680 highest so definitely ten on scandalousness i mean she blackmailed the king of france

00:46:29.340 reveal your invasion plans like that's like basically she said i will start a war

00:46:36.880 i will literally start a war if you don't bag off i agree i agree entirely and then when you

00:46:43.120 add on to that the fact like that she was a spy that she worked for this like super secret spy

00:46:46.840 network like it's a high score there the next category so again it's a zero to ten so next one

00:46:52.220 is scheminess so just like and that can be sort of like how smart she was but like how many plans

00:46:58.400 she did were they good schemes and i feel like this is going to be a high score as well but i 0.95

00:47:02.720 will default to you i would say at least an eight like yeah you know maybe she wasn't able to

00:47:09.780 successfully get an amazon army which clearly was her end game and which would have been amazing 1.00

00:47:16.160 so can't give her the 10 there but like yeah she was a skilled schemer i think between like 0.84

00:47:25.020 the fact that she was very successful as a spy and then the fact like the way that she stayed 1.00

00:47:30.060 in england and then the blackmail plot and then also the way that she'd like used her celebrity

00:47:34.840 and pr to just like affect this transition like i agree i think an eight is good and like you know

00:47:42.400 she was remarkably successful destroying the career of the diplomat who apparently drugged her

00:47:48.740 yes yes i don't have a scale for like vengeance but i feel like she would get that too because

00:47:55.860 she's just like oh you're crossing with me like guess what like i've been a spy my whole life

00:47:59.300 i'm super smart and like i will destroy you and she did not a person you want to cross um the

00:48:04.220 next category is significance so this can be both like her significance like at the time she was

00:48:10.600 alive but then like the legacy what she means to other people but also like what she did that

00:48:16.300 could have set the stage for future generations of people well that's really complicated like 0.54

00:48:20.580 we're still talking about her and so many trans women i know are motivated to claim her because

00:48:28.160 the gall like the nerve well that's why i think i think her significance is really strong

00:48:35.740 to the trans community so i think if you just see it through that

00:48:39.120 gail like how significant is she yeah and i would say her significance

00:48:43.440 she would have been a much more significant figure in the history of early 1.00

00:48:47.820 feminism if cis women hadn't dropped her after the genital reveal like 1.00

00:48:56.080 definitely you don't see the next generation after wollstonecraft 1.00

00:49:00.040 treating her as the same level of figure and it has everything to do with just

00:49:04.520 having decided that she was never a woman honestly though when you think too about the

00:49:08.280 significance of like her actions in the war her actions as a spy like we can never quantify what

00:49:14.700 exactly that did but i think she was involved in france's success some of these probably as well

00:49:22.300 yeah but it's good it's hard to say so i don't know where would you put her for significance

00:49:26.620 to the trans community probably an eight nine more broadly six seven okay i'm gonna average

00:49:37.160 that out to like 7.5 cool but yeah no that's i like how you broke that down because yeah it's

00:49:42.940 like significance to the trans community really high but then she i think she should be more

00:49:47.880 significant to oh yeah but she's not so it's like we need to be yeah i mean i think role

00:49:53.240 Wollstonecraft had it right like so then the last category so it's the sexism category which is just

00:50:00.500 like how much did the patriarchy hold her back everybody gets at least a five because of course

00:50:07.440 but like how much do how much did sexism hold her back 10 yeah in life and in death like

00:50:15.760 it's pretty clear that the scope of her ambitions was enormous clearly she wanted to

00:50:22.640 end slavery clearly she wanted to end patriarchy like and of course the two are linked clearly

00:50:32.220 she wanted to do a great deal and she managed to do a lot for herself but she did die poor

00:50:38.960 and then she you know for the next 200 years people argued about whether she was

00:50:45.960 like a trans woman or just a man with a really good reason to pretend to be a trans woman

00:50:53.580 which is yeah and i hate how that obfuscates all of the cool stuff that she had been doing

00:51:01.640 to like limit her to just be like oh look at this interesting gender story where it's like no like 1.00

00:51:06.700 she wanted to send an all-woman brigade to the american revolution like she wanted like she was 0.58

00:51:11.480 so into like the feminist stuff at the time like but yeah no so how that all adds up just so you 0.62

00:51:18.400 know it's a 35.5 the highest score anyone's ever gotten on the podcast is a 38 so she's like close

00:51:24.800 it's a 38 38 is fredigand i don't know if you know about fredigand she's like who can top her

00:51:33.260 so far nobody but yeah so fredigan is a 38 queen margot his 37.5 extra points for like

00:51:40.860 gleeful murder right fredigan gets points for a lot of murder-based things yeah and jinga of

00:51:48.500 angola has a 36 um harem sultan has 36 and then the chevalier 35.5 so she's in fifth place overall

00:51:58.100 It's a good ranking.

00:51:59.600 I am happy.

00:52:00.780 I'm happy for her.

00:52:01.640 I think she deserves to be right up there. 0.83

00:52:04.620 Now, since I have you, who are the other two trans women of the 18th century who you want 0.96

00:52:09.780 to talk about?

00:52:10.580 All right. 0.97

00:52:10.920 Well, let's start with the lower ranking one first.

00:52:15.200 Known to history as the Abbe de Choisy and from Burgundy, but also known better, I think,

00:52:23.680 well, I'm not going to misgender her.

00:52:25.100 I'm just going to call her Debar because she decided she was the Comtesse Debar for several years and then wrote a massively successful memoir about it.

00:52:34.520 Essentially, she was the story she put out was that her mother simply decided she was a girl and raised her accordingly.

00:52:42.620 But like that was probably political maneuvering as well, because that was just how she preferred to be.

00:52:51.080 and also because she spent much of her childhood as playmate to louis the 14th's trans sister 0.92

00:52:58.660 more on that in a second okay their mothers were were tight and were just like well let's just get

00:53:05.740 them both great dresses like life may be hard but it doesn't have to be hard now so at the age of 18

00:53:13.000 she was sort of heavily socially shamed and was like okay fine i guess i'll try to dress as a boy

00:53:18.180 for a bit didn't like it stopped almost immediately and spent vast amounts of money on ridiculously

00:53:25.880 gaudy outfits because she was a fashionista at one point the dauphin's like hard-ass tutor comes 0.96

00:53:35.160 up to her at a party and is just like you should be ashamed of yourself you disgust me completely

00:53:39.660 what's wrong with you and she's like well i just can't i can't just have people walking up to me

00:53:44.040 party is doing that i've got to get her to paris so like she retreats to the countryside 0.77

00:53:49.240 she has her lawyer prepare for her an identity as a respectable widow and the contested bar

00:53:56.260 uh she dyes her hair she's like yeah okay fine we'll just go with really dark hair for now 1.00

00:54:01.820 and then suitably disguised she basically just starts sleeping with everyone in sight according 1.00

00:54:08.060 to her memoirs like well she only really records the women she slept with because that wasn't 0.96

00:54:12.840 illegal like there was no potential death penalty for sleeping with women so it's like memoirs of a

00:54:18.480 trans lesbian she gives her skincare regimen in passing and her memoirs her memoirs are actually 0.84

00:54:25.160 hilarious they're kind of ridiculous um she starts them off by basically observing she's like 0.98

00:54:30.040 every so often i try i try to stop being a woman 0.87

00:54:34.680 I put on boy clothes and the darndest thing keeps happening I just gamble all the time

00:54:43.000 she's like I spend so much money gambling that eventually I just realized I can't keep doing

00:54:48.960 this anymore so I repierce my ears put on a great dress and I feel great she's like let me tell you

00:54:56.360 but my skincare regimen my skin is amazingly soft of course I'm gorgeous and her memoir just 0.98

00:55:02.780 continues in this vein like it's hilarious i love it like incredibly arrogant she was probably

00:55:09.280 annoying to be around but she was hilarious there's a rumor that i find somewhat credible

00:55:16.220 that one of her lovers was prince eugene of zavor which would be scandalous on multiple levels

00:55:22.660 especially since this is like roughly war of the spanish succession era no it's a little before

00:55:27.980 that I guess it's yeah it's before that so maybe it's not that scandalous maybe it's just scandalous

00:55:33.580 because you know Prince Eugene of Savoy she's also known for being part of a diplomatic mission to

00:55:40.640 the kingdom of Siam really and writing extensively about it she wasn't just a pretty face

00:55:47.520 David Hume actually has both her had both her like scandalous memoirs and her account of the

00:55:55.800 situation in Siam in his library. Eventually, she sort of went back to the countryside and just

00:56:02.260 carried on writing letters to various scandalous people. Her memoirs were a big bestseller

00:56:08.420 posthumously, but also there were a bunch of open secrets during her life. She's an interesting

00:56:14.540 figure to me. She also apparently wrote a fairy tale with Charles Perrault, and I forget which

00:56:21.680 feminist writer of the late 17th century but it was like sharp role the writer of fairy tales

00:56:28.940 the feminist and her sat down to write a fairy tale the fairy tale is essentially the story of

00:56:34.720 this young marquise who has this interesting backstory where her mother was like i'm going 0.90

00:56:40.440 to have a girl then after her child was born she was informed she had a born she was like nope nope

00:56:46.720 girl fairytale proceeds you know the young girl was raised in extravagance she had all these

00:56:51.800 wonderful things she had all the accomplishments you would expect pretty dresses too and so on and

00:56:56.940 so forth then it's like and then one day she meets this handsome young marquis her exact social

00:57:02.280 station wonderful match made in heaven they fall for each other they arrange a marriage on the

00:57:09.120 wedding night they're disrobing innocently not suspecting anything could be amiss and then

00:57:16.220 And basically what happens is they both have a surprise genital reveal, sort of look at each other, shrug and are like, well, this is fine. 0.53

00:57:23.720 And proceed with their lives happily ever after, which is like, I guess you could say early T4T.

00:57:34.320 I'm trying to find a good copy of that, but it's difficult to track down.

00:57:39.500 there's a i forgot which university press has a pretty good omnibus with it um and her memoirs but

00:57:46.620 like from 2004 so i dread the author's note but yeah so that's that's the contested bar or the

00:57:54.220 abbe de choisi yeah and the person whose playmate she was philippe the trans sister of louis the

00:58:03.180 14th has a completely bananas life as well okay I'm like I'm so excited here

00:58:11.160 so clearly in her childhood at least at least according to Swazi she had a playmate who was 0.61

00:58:21.000 also a trans girl and they hung out together and they wore dresses and everything was great

00:58:25.340 but she was also like a pretty major prince which brought a lot of heartbreak so she had this

00:58:34.260 this famous on again off again relationship with this duke it was very stormy at one point

00:58:40.880 she marries i forgot who someone someone important and then of course he feuds like the duke feuds

00:58:50.080 with her wife with her wife it's this whole mess her wife gets the duke sent to the bastille

00:58:55.680 or no was it to the chateau d'if yeah her wife gets her wife gets her boyfriend sent to the 0.89

00:59:02.140 chateau d'if then she has to go to her brother and be like please let my boyfriend out of the 0.82

00:59:06.880 chateau d'if please let my boyfriend out of the chateau d'if she was apparently a very successful 0.99

00:59:11.920 general like terrifying field commander and famously had a statue of achilles created in

00:59:21.540 the gardens of versailles it's achilles on skiros so it's like achilles in a beautiful dress looking

00:59:27.100 like the woman warrior she was apparently very significant to philippe because that was her

00:59:35.120 contribution to the gardens of versailles which i find pretty interesting it's like oh okay she

00:59:41.160 definitely related to this particular version of Achilles who's interpreted as a trans feminine 0.84

00:59:48.380 person when she died her friends were like oh she was the silliest woman who ever lived

00:59:53.860 like basically that was her obituary

00:59:57.040 her life was probably pretty sad but like also very privileged with stormy boyfriends and

01:00:05.340 wives who sent those stormy boyfriends to the chateau d'if since you brought up the statue

01:00:10.860 of achilles i feel like it's a natural progression to wrap things back around to your version of

01:00:16.780 achilles in your book which everybody should buy and read i agree buy ralph got a thing read ralph

01:00:23.760 got a thing he'll get to meet achilles so i know like the vague outlines of the story of achilles

01:00:30.940 but i don't i'm not familiar with the part you just said about what the statue is made of like

01:00:35.020 the Achilles like this Achilles like what's that what's that story so one of the one of the parts

01:00:42.520 of the Achilles mythos is and this is in a bunch of different classical sources um and also

01:00:48.480 represented on art from the classical period probably it reflects a pretty old tradition

01:00:53.300 it's not referenced in the Iliad but it appears on art pretty early where Achilles lived for

01:01:00.040 years before the trojan war as a woman named pira on the island of skiros and had a relationship

01:01:07.140 with the princess of skiros de damia so achilles was a trans lesbian and that episode was super

01:01:16.800 popular in art literally from the classical period to the 19th century when it kind of stopped

01:01:25.140 because all of a sudden people needed a little more consistency in their gendered representations

01:01:31.000 of achilles but yeah frequently like a surprisingly often amount of the time achilles

01:01:38.100 was portrayed as a woman we see this in the renaissance we see this in the middle ages we

01:01:42.260 see this in the classical period achilles was often portrayed by women on stage shakespeare

01:01:49.100 kind of riffs on that when he makes his achilles very feminine it's just a really long-standing

01:01:53.580 tradition there's a roman epic unfinished epic called the achillead which by statius which i

01:02:00.900 detest which is one of the more elaborated forms of that story statius just decides to take the

01:02:08.380 the narrative and go as trans misogynist as he can in order to like guess make achilles like

01:02:15.380 the kind of man the romans could relate to in that version achilles is forced to live as a woman by

01:02:21.020 his mother in order to prevent achilles from going to war so the first scene is just like mom i can't

01:02:28.680 believe you would force me to live as a woman i'm so mad at you wait the princess of scurus is hot 0.98

01:02:34.080 i'm going to rape her and that's what happens which i mean that's the kind of thing with the 0.99

01:02:40.500 romans vibed with it's definitely not the kind of thing i vibe with so i thought to myself well 0.99

01:02:45.660 this cannot stand. Then I thought to myself, also, isn't it a simpler and more economical

01:02:52.440 story if Achilles is just a trans woman? Exactly. It's a chevalier all over again. 0.95

01:02:58.440 Yeah. So that was the point of departure for writing Wrath Goddess Sing.

01:03:01.800 Yeah. We start on Skiros. She ran away from Thea some years before, like less than two years before, 0.87

01:03:09.680 but you know a couple years in order to live as herself she's constantly worried that sales in

01:03:15.980 the distance might mean that her myrmidon relatives have come to collect her sales appear they turn out

01:03:23.220 to be diomedus and odysseus who are looking for prince achilles and have no idea that the polite

01:03:30.820 young woman they just encountered is prince achilles and it kind of goes from there but it

01:03:36.360 it's very weird yeah I'm so excited about it I have I'm very much looking forward to reading it

01:03:44.480 and I think it's there's could you have known when you were writing this book that it's coming

01:03:49.680 at this moment where people are like obsessed with like Circe and like the Trojan women like

01:03:53.980 books about this time period these myths are like having a moment and like here you come

01:03:59.460 honestly we had so many publishers pass because they were like the song of achilles just came out

01:04:07.500 10 years ago surely this wave is over and then enter like book talk and suddenly everybody's

01:04:12.500 all about it yeah and i think too that's a great time to just sort of think about what we're doing

01:04:18.660 as we retell because there are so many different ways to retell and these stories were never

01:04:24.200 neutral like the iliad for instance it's i mean alexander the great slept with the copy of the

01:04:31.700 iliad under his pillow and literally would occasionally just say my ancestor achilles

01:04:36.340 was killed in this area so i can invade like it became the foundation of like the hellenistic

01:04:42.520 imperial colonial literature the british used it the same way the iliad is like like retellings

01:04:49.880 and framings of these stories are never neutral and i think it's really interesting to think

01:04:54.700 about what we're doing when we decide to make achilles the kind of person who would only ever

01:05:01.980 would only ever deign to wear women's clothing in order to rape princesses or when we reject that

01:05:08.720 yeah it feels very timely yeah it's i think it's coming at the perfect moment for this book

01:05:17.040 i think not just because of like retellings happen to be like popular but just because of

01:05:22.720 where we are as a society not to get into all of that but i think it's so important and i think

01:05:28.880 this is part of what was in the um the message i got from your publicist was just saying like

01:05:33.840 this is what is it it's like like a book about a trans character written by a trans author

01:05:38.760 being published by one by this huge publisher like this is like groundbreaking in those ways

01:05:43.520 yeah it's something that couldn't have happened even a few years ago and hopefully in a few years

01:05:49.540 it'll continue to be conceivable no but i think like as everything we've just been talking about

01:05:54.380 like it's just such a good reminder or maybe some people who didn't know that like trans people have

01:05:59.380 been here all along oh yeah the earliest no the earliest writer whose name we know

01:06:06.160 and Heduanna writes extensively like basically praising the goddess Anana that transition is

01:06:13.220 possible and there are substantial hints in the text that at least and Heduanna was

01:06:20.240 either was the author or was regarded as the author of these super famous religious hymns

01:06:27.740 that were used for the next 2500 years and there are definitely trans elements in how Heduanna

01:06:35.360 is described in these hymns as well which wouldn't actually be surprising but it would be one of

01:06:40.600 those cases of a historical figure who has just been presumed cis because there's not affirmative

01:06:46.680 evidence of transness but affirmative evidence of transness doesn't even help as we see with

01:06:51.980 yeah god you're you know so much about everything i'm just like learning

01:06:59.040 thank you so much from you have you so you've always had an interest in greek mythology you

01:07:06.260 said that's been kind of like your thing from a young age did you study history or is it more of

01:07:11.620 like i mean like did you like officially study history or is this just like in your you just do

01:07:17.120 it yourself oh no i'm a talented amateur yeah no my formal degrees are in fiction okay but no um

01:07:25.960 trans history i mean i would also say like to be interested in the written word growing up as a

01:07:33.140 trans woman as a millennial meant constantly encountering buried trans stories likely at

01:07:40.300 but also like an edwana or like yusupov who killed rasputin yusupova has a memoir lost splendor which

01:07:49.360 essentially amounts to coming out repeatedly as a trans woman but also being confident no one will

01:07:55.260 ever actually get it so like at one point the assassin of Rasputin just spends chapters talking

01:08:05.560 about how gorgeous she was in her dresses as she lived for years as a woman in her brother's house

01:08:10.620 before there was a giant scandal that caused her family to find out and like you run into these

01:08:17.820 stories you look around everyone is just saying oh you know he was just unusual over and over

01:08:25.120 again but they build and it becomes this this inch in the back of your brain you can't scratch

01:08:31.020 it becomes this sensation like walking over your own grave constantly you just have these these

01:08:37.680 buried stories so i would say more than anything my love of stories and mythology and history is

01:08:43.340 also tied to that it's tied to oh there there's hidden stories that can seal the light of day but

01:08:49.960 only if we actually encounter them on their own terms instead of saying nope nothing to see here

01:08:55.260 yeah so it's like detective work it's like on unforgetting yeah it's like brushing away all

01:09:04.100 these like convoluted explanations that don't actually make any sense to be like oh but the 0.68

01:09:08.860 obvious thing is like oh this is a trans woman like if we just if we just remove like 75 of this

01:09:14.600 of this like biography and just like focus on like what actually the facts are you're like oh

01:09:18.860 well he has to serve a trans woman okay like yeah so it's just like there's weeding through all that

01:09:24.060 stuff yeah in a way it's like a demystification and it's like a clarification of just if you get

01:09:30.420 rid of all the like confusing other people well all history i guess is written by somebody who's

01:09:35.480 an agenda but once you realize that agenda if you're like well how many of these facts are

01:09:39.400 being filtered through somebody's point of view and then like at the end of the day when you get

01:09:43.580 or that point of view, like what is left. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I find it so fascinating.

01:09:50.440 Well, thank you so much for this conversation. This is like, I can't wait to publish this. I

01:09:57.400 can't wait for everybody to hear everything you have to say. I can't wait for people to learn like

01:10:00.940 a about the Chevalier and B about you and your book. Thank you. Oh my gosh. I'm really excited.

01:10:08.440 Thank you so much for this amazing conversation. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

01:10:13.580 so the first and most important thing is maya dean's book wrath goddess sing

01:10:20.380 available in stores everywhere hardcover paperback ebook audiobook it's a wonderful

01:10:25.680 book and i really think everybody should read it frankly and if you want to support the fundraiser

01:10:31.920 that we're doing for the trevor project you can go to vulgarhistory.com slash trevor to get your

01:10:36.740 Regency Queer Ringer T, designed by Yann-Yupiter, featuring all of the Queer Regency era figures

01:10:44.360 we've talked about this series, including Le Chevalier d'Or. And I do want to mention,

01:10:48.800 since I recorded this episode in 2022, since then I went, I've been on a few trips actually to

01:10:54.520 England and at the National Portrait Gallery, there's the portrait of the Chevalier d'Or,

01:10:58.500 the one that was recently discovered, the oil painting. And then there's also every clip I

01:11:04.480 think that they had in their collection about the Chevalier d'Ordean is all on a wall together. So

01:11:07.860 you can see all these images from pamphlets and things. And I love that she's so present

01:11:12.300 at this, at the National Portrait Gallery in England, because she, a French person,

01:11:16.580 but really made her mark in England as well. And there was, as far as I know, the most recent

01:11:22.120 portrayal of the Chevalier d'Ordean was on the Apple TV Plus show, Franklin, starring Michael

01:11:28.180 Douglas as Benjamin Franklin, which takes place when he was in Paris. And he meets up with the

01:11:34.000 at one point and i was just excited to see her out there appearing as a character in costume dramas

01:11:38.780 and like let's let's get some more queer figures and more of these historical things like they're

01:11:44.040 going to be doing with a new season of bridgerton anyway more regency era episodes coming up

01:11:50.100 for the next two weeks i think we have two more regency era stories to get to and at the end of

01:11:55.440 it we're going to be doing a big playoff we're going to be choosing the diamond of the season

01:11:59.820 like they do on Bridgerton so it's a series of polls and votes uh based on the seating for these

01:12:06.380 things are going to be based on everybody's scandalousness scale score you the listeners

01:12:10.700 will be voting um on all these matchups until one person emerges as the diamond of the season

01:12:14.920 it'd be really cool if Chevalier day on one now I'm honestly not biased I'd be we've had so many

01:12:19.980 iconic stories this series I'd be happy with anyone winning and I'm curious to see who will

01:12:23.940 anyway I'll have more details about that coming up in later episodes of this podcast I wrote a

01:12:29.100 book. It's called Rebel of the Regency, The Scandoseg of Carolina Brunswick, Britain's Queen

01:12:33.120 Without a Crown. And Chevalier Dayan does not appear in that book. Although Carolina Brunswick

01:12:39.420 was an ally. She had some sapphic friends and she hung out with some queer people and she was a 1.00

01:12:46.460 chill lady. And I think you'd like reading about her. Anyway, you can get that book. It's available

01:12:50.420 in North America. And at the end of May, May 21st, it's going to be available in the UK. I thought it

01:12:55.420 was going to be there earlier it wasn't i think the ghost of prinny was stopping it it's little

01:13:01.040 ship sailing from north america full of books over to the uk but anyway may 21st it will be

01:13:06.260 there for you uk listeners stay strong it'll be there for you soon anyway next time more regency 0.98

01:13:12.760 era scandals to get into and until then keep your pants on and your tits out 0.96

01:13:19.180 vulgar history is researched scripted and hosted by ann foster editor is christina lumagi theme 0.97

01:13:28.220 music is by the severin duo regency era artwork by karen moynihan social media videos by magdalena

01:13:34.580 denson transcripts of this podcast are available at vulgarhistory.com by aveline malik you can get

01:13:40.440 early ad-free episodes of vulgar history by becoming a paid member of our patreon at patreon.com

01:13:45.600 slash ann foster writer vulgar history merchandise is available at vulgar history.com

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01:13:55.740 follow us on social media at vulgar history pod get in touch with me at vulgar history pod

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Vulgar History - April 29, 2026

Regency Era Trans Icon Chevalière d'Éon (revisited)

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